Jones won kudos in late 2002 for her seductive performance on Broadway as Mary McCarthy (opposite Swoosie Kurtz's Lillian Hellman) in Nora Ephron's "play with music," Imaginary Friends, an exploration of the famous literary feud between the two writers.

Sponsor Message.

In 2004, Jones starred in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which moved to Broadway in 2005 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Hailed by critics as mesmerizing and powerful, Jones's intense performance as a nun suspicious that a priest might be abusing students was rewarded with her second Tony Award.

In 2008, Jones joined the cast of the Fox television series, 24, playing the role of the President of the United States. For her work in this role, she received yet another accolade: a 2009 Emmy Award as Best Supporting Actress in a Drama.

Jones's road to stardom has not been without bumps. In the early 1990s she suffered a bout of clinical depression and drank heavily, but she has overcome these problems.

Colleagues are impressed by her presence both on stage and off. Director Robert Falls, with whom she worked in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana, speaks of her "absolute command of the stage." Playwright Tina Howe, in whose Pride's Crossing Jones starred in New York, adds that "she's always adding feeling and color and light into any room she walks . . . . [Jones] is a very healthy woman and sort of shines, as if she has all these klieg lights inside her."

Quick to learn lines, eager to accept challenges, and generous in her appreciation of those with whom she works, Jones is considered a consummate professional. Andre Bishop, the artistic director of the Lincoln Center Theater, states that "[e]veryone adores Cherry because, number one, she's a first-rate person. Number two, she's a first-rate actress. And, number three, she's hardworking to a fault."

Jones has also been described as "genuinely and deeply modest." Indeed, she eschews the glamour that can come with stardom in favor of a simpler lifestyle.

After Jones received her first Tony Award, she and O'Connor celebrated her win--and coincidentally O'Connor's fortieth birthday--by driving to the home of some friends and drinking coffee in their farmyard as the sun came up.

However, in 2004, after 18 years together, Jones and O'Connor decided to break up. Jones subsequently entered into a relationship with actress Sarah Paulson.

Jones called the experience of being the first out lesbian to win a Tony "humbling," and spoke of the importance of the award to others, saying that "it means the world to all of those people in all of those places who can't be out."

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual actors and actresses are among the elite of contemporary theater, but only recently have many come out publicly.

The works of García Lorca, internationally recognized as Spain's most prominent lyric poet and dramatist of the twentieth century, are filled with thinly veiled homosexual motifs and themes.

America's only nationally broadcast gay and lesbian newsmagazine, In the Life began in 1992 as a variety show, but has since evolved into an acclaimed public-affairs program.

In addition to being a prize-winning playwright, Tony Kushner has become a celebrity spokesman for gay politics and AIDS activism.

As one of the key figures that western civilization has used to define itself, William Shakespeare stands in a complicated, fiercely contested relationship to homosexuality.

In her work, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel has tackled difficult topics, including AIDS, incest, and prostitution.

Conflicted over his own sexuality, Tennessee Williams wrote directly about homosexuality only in his short stories, his poetry, and his late plays.