But I didn’t work in TV for years after that. There was no question that I was going to do it. ” There were some people who thought it wasn’t a good move, but I didn’t care. GARBER After playing Jesus in Godspell, the director, David Greene, said, “I’d like you to play Liberace. There was a real feeling of being ostracized. And you suddenly got into scenarios where you go to people’s houses and you see them washing your plates in a different sink. AIDS put the gay movement back a lot because people were terrified of us. So our profile from the late ’70s to the early ’80s changed radically. But I had two dinners with Rock Hudson, and we did not go to the restaurant together.ĮVERETT At first, it all seemed rather effortless. Richard Chamberlain wouldn’t go out on the street with me. But I didn’t have the courage to do it until I was older.įIERSTEIN I used to say if you want to know if somebody is gay, just look to see if there is a photograph of me with them - because if there is a photograph of me with them, they’re not gay because people in the closet would not be photographed with me.
VICTOR GARBER, ACTOR, 71 Ian McKellen and I had dinner one night, and it was just around the time he had come out. But I had to thank him just to show them. A producer of the Tonys said, “And please no one repeat the embarrassment of last year.” When I won, I got up and I thanked “my lover, Scott, for typing scripts and blah-blah-blah,” which he really didn’t do. The following year I was nominated again for writing La Cage aux Folles. Every time I’d drive by it, I was just perplexed and would never have stepped foot in there, but I wondered what was happening inside.įIERSTEIN When Torch Song Trilogy won the Tony for best play in 1983, my producer, John Glines, thanked his lover in his speech. I was terrified of Oil Can Harry’s in the valley. I was terrified of Club Rage and being seen there. in the ’70s and ’80s, so West Hollywood was kind of the beacon of. NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, ACTOR, 46 I lived in L.A. THE ’80 s : “THERE WAS A REAL FEELING OF BEING OSTRACIZED” After that, ABC did not pick up our contract. Well, Anita Bryant was in the news at the time, and I did a line, “She even quit the church because the choir insisted on singing, ‘Go Down Moses.’ ” The next day the national news says, “Avowed lesbian Robin Tyler takes on Anita Bryant.” They couldn’t call you a lesbian they called you an “avowed lesbian.” You had to sign in blood you were a lesbian. TYLER My comedy duo Harrison and Tyler opened The Krofft Comedy Hour. But the press was very discreet back then - the fan magazines and all that. Within the business, it was not a big secret. Nobody cautioned me against it, and I didn’t talk about it. It never occurred to me to hide who I was.ĬHAMBERLAIN I had a few dalliances. HARVEY FIERSTEIN, ACTOR/ PLAYWRIGHT, 65 When I was a little kid, I knew I was attracted to men. I said something to her, and she was like, “Oh no, no, no, no, that’s wrong, you don’t think like that and don’t say that again.” I was like, “Oh, OK - so this is different.” Then one of my older brother’s girlfriends, I had a crush on her.
WANDA SYKES, COMEDIAN/ACTOR, 56 I knew that something was different back when I was in the second or third grade and I crushed on teachers. So because I read this one piece of literature, I came out. ROBIN TYLER, COMEDIAN/ACTIVIST, 78 I read this article in 1959: “If you are a woman who loves another woman, what you are is a lesbian.” It was by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. And so I had not only this feeling that there was something wrong with me, which I got from the childhood experiences, but that it would have been the end of my acting career. It took me ages to understand that being gay wasn’t quite acceptable there.ĬHAMBERLAIN Being a kind of romantic leading man, I thought being gay would be a disaster for me careerwise. But graduating into a world like the cinema was completely different. And this was the ’70s, so it was the time of Studio 54, and it seemed in those clubs, underneath the glitter ball, that there was an incredibly liberal world. RUPERT EVERETT, ACTOR, 61 At age 16 or 17, I hit the discos and the clubs. And I spent a great deal of my life pretending to be a regular person. RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, ACTOR, 86 Growing up in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, being gay was not an option. THE BAD OLD DAYS: “IT JUST WASN’T AN OPTION”