David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and director. He is best known for playing psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series during the show's run. Pierce has played supporting roles in many films, including Little Man Tate, The Fisher King, Sleepless in Seattle, A Bug's Life, Osmosis Jones, Wet Hot American Summer, and Oliver Stone's Nixon.
Pierce has also had a successful career on stage. His Broadway roles include Sir Robin in Spamalot, Vanya in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly! He won the 2007 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance in Curtains. In 2015, he directed the Broadway musical It Shoulda Been You.
After years of media speculation about his sexuality, Pierce revealed his homosexuality in 2007 and later confirmed through his publicist that he and television writer, director and producer Brian Hargrove were a couple. When accepting his Tony Award for Curtains, Pierce thanked "my partner, Brian, because it's 24 years of listening to your damn notes—that's why I'm up here tonight." They married in California on October 24, 2008, just days before Proposition 8 was adopted as law, banning same-sex marriages in the state. On May 28, 2009, while a guest on The View, he publicly announced his marriage to Hargrove and expressed his anger about the approval of Proposition 8. He is a godparent to Frasier co-star Jane Leeves' son, Finn, as was his late Frasier co-star John Mahoney. Pierce has spent years working with the Alzheimer's Association on behalf of Americans with Alzheimer's disease. He has appeared in Washington, D.C., to testify in support of expanding funding for treatment, and he publicly campaigned for the National Alzheimer's Project Act. Pierce told MSNBC in 2011, "it is up to us, to all of us, to the American people and to their representatives about whether we face the challenges and make all the effort necessary or if we ignore it and just let this sort of tidal wave crash over us."