KINKY BOOTS' Harvey Fierstein Appears on CBS SUNDAY MORNING Today

Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein's work to help those with AIDS and preventing the spread of the virus came after he hit rock bottom, he tells Richard Schlesinger in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH Charles Osgood to be broadcast today, June 9, 2013 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.

Fierstein, who currently has two shows on Broadway - "Kinky Boots" and "Newsies" - and is known for his distinctive raspy voice, tells Schlesinger he hit his darkest days during the AIDS epidemic. He lost "almost everyone I loved," he says. "I had the ashes of three or four friends buried in my backyard."

He was so moved he wrote a series of three short plays called "Safe Sex," talking about life in the age of AIDS. But then he turned to drinking and little else. "I almost died. That's how you come out of those periods. You hit bottom," he says, explaining he then realized what his life goals were. He found a calling as an activist speaking passionately about AIDS prevention and gay rights.

Fierstein, who is openly gay, has made a career of playing gay men, talks to Schlesinger about his work on and off the stage and his role in the evolution of the way gay people are portrayed in the theater, television and film.

"I know I'm part of it," he says. "Obviously I'm part of it. Because I know when I went on 'The Tonight Show' and talked about being gay with Johnny Carson, he didn't seem to know a lot of other people who had done that before."

Schlesinger's interview with Fierstein will be broadcast today, June 9, 2013. CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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