Joseph Mantello (born December 27, 1962) is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen.

He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).

He has directed notable productions such as Wicked (2003), Glengarry Glen Ross (2005), The Humans (2016), Three Tall Women (2018), and The Boys in the Band (2018).

[4] Mantello studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts; he started the Edge Theater in New York City with actress Mary-Louise Parker and writer Peter Hedges.

Mantello came to New York from Illinois in 1984 in the midst of the AIDS crisis, having overcome a youthful feeling, he admitted to a reporter in 2013, that "for some reason I was deeply ashamed of the theater early on.

"[5] Mantello began his theatrical career as an actor in Keith Curran's Walking the Dead and Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz.

"[6] Mantello directs a variety of theatre works, as The New York Times noted: "Very few American directors – Jack O'Brien and Mike Nichols come to mind – successfully jump genres and styles the way Mr. Mantello does, moving from a two-hander like Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune to the huge canvas of a mainstream musical comedy like Wicked, from downtown stand-up (The Santaland Diaries) to contemporary opera (Dead Man Walking) to political performance art (The Vagina Monologues).