Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt (December 25, 1908 – November 21, 1999), was an English writer, raconteur, and actor whose openly effeminate self-presentation in mid-twentieth-century London made him a forerunner of gay visibility long before legal reform. His autobiography The Naked Civil Servant (1968) brought him fame in late middle age.

Born in Sutton, Surrey, he studied journalism briefly at King's College London and worked as a commercial artist, freelance writer, and book illustrator. From the early 1930s he wore makeup, dyed hair, and openly identified as homosexual when such conduct could be prosecuted under English law. He earned a living for decades as a life model in London art schools, the work that gave his memoir its title under the Inland Revenue's classification of professional models.

The 1968 book attracted little notice until Thames Television adapted it as a 1975 film starring John Hurt, which won an International Emmy and made Crisp an unlikely household name in Britain. He embarked on a one-man stage show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, which he toured in Britain and the United States; he settled in New York City in 1981 and became an American citizen.

Crisp wrote further memoirs, including How to Become a Virgin (1981) and Resident Alien (1996), and acted in films such as Orlando (1992), in which he played Queen Elizabeth I. A second John Hurt television film, An Englishman in New York, dramatized his American years after his death in Manchester in 1999.

The name Quentin comes from the Latin Quintinus, a diminutive of Quintus meaning fifth. He chose it himself in his twenties, replacing his birth name to mark a new life.