Who

Stipe is the front man of R.E.M., the band that launched a thousand college rock stations.

Backstory

In 1975, a 15-year old Stipe bought a copy of Patti Smith's record Horses. He stayed up all night listening to it while eating a giant bowl of cherries; the next morning—after throwing up—the Georgia native and Air Force brat decided to devote his life to music. Five years later, he teamed up with University of Georgia classmates Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry to form R.E.M.; the group released its first album, Murmur, in 1983. They went on to define the alt-rock genre, and set the pace for generations of whiny guitar groups. Among R.E.M.'s major hits is 1991's Out of Time, which won two Grammys, begat the unexpected radio sensation "Losing My Religion," and was named one of the 100 greatest albums of all time by that ultimate arbiter of musical genius, Time; 1992's equally seminal Automatic for the People went quadruple platinum and yielded the melancholy anthem "Everybody Hurts."

Despite losing drummer Bill Berry in 1997 to "creative differences" (he went to go live a hermit's life on a Georgia farm), the band continued to plug along, regrettably deciding to give their sound a downbeat makeover for the albums Up and Reveal. The early '00s saw R.E.M. parrot Radiohead to disastrous effect, a phase that reached its nadir with 2004's execrable Around the Sun. All in, R.E.M has released 14 albums, most recently 2008's Accelerate. No longer the indie rock god he was in the late 80's, Stipe nonetheless remains iconic for his role as the gender-bending, gaunt-faced, eyeliner-loving front man.

On the side

Stipe has kept busy outside of music. His film production company, Single Cell, produced Being John Malkovich, Velvet Goldmine, and Saved! He's also kept up the political activism he's long been known for. An outspoken critic of the Iraq war and the Bush Administration, he headlined the "Bring 'Em Home Now!" concert in 2006. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Stipe recorded covers of Joseph Arthur's "In the Sun" with Chris Martin (of Coldplay) and Justin Timberlake to support relief efforts.

Personal

After dodging questions about his sexuality for decades, Stipe finally outed himself in a 2001 interview with Newsweek. He was previously linked to Fischerspooner front man Casey Spooner, and refers to his current boyfriend, a younger Frenchman, as "the Mister." Stipe bought actor Casey Affleck's three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath penthouse on Canal Street for $5.75 million in 2007. He divides his time between Georgia and New York.

True story

Stipe made a brief foray into acting with the little-watched 1988 indie flick Arena Brains. While he wisely decided to stick to music, the movie did help launch the careers of several actors who'd go onto bigger things—Eric Bogosian, Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, and Sean Young.