Shaiman is a composer and lyricist known for the musical Hairspray, his scoring of dozens Hollywood films, and his work with Bette Midler.

Shaiman grew up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and in 1976, at the tender age of 16, he dropped out of high school and moved to New York. There he put on dozens of shows at an obscure East Village church basement/venue called Club 57. After only a few years, he'd managed to chummy up to his idol Bette Midler and has since been credited with bringing her such camp standards as "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "From a Distance," which won Midler four Grammy awards.

By the early 90s, Shaiman had become a prominent scorer of movies, working on any film that somehow involved Milder, Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, or Scott Rudin; his credits from the period include When Harry Met Sally, Misery, City Slickers, The Addams Family, Sister Act, and Sleepless in Seattle. And though he'd always brought a Broadway sensibility to his scoring work, his first big-time theater gig was 2002's enormously successful Hairspray; he and co-composer/romantic partner for close to three-decades Scott Wittman earned Tonys for the show. The couple also co-wrote the score for the 2005 musical version of The Odd Couple, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, a score for a musical adaptation of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can, and original music for NBC's Smash. [Image via Getty]