I was told that if I wanted to be a leading man in Hollywood, I couldn't possibly be thought of as gay.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Even now, there are young actors who want careers as romantic leading men, and the best thing is not to reveal you're gay.
The media has gone through lots of things that make it a less foreign thing to have your lead character be gay.
You can't be an openly gay movie star. You can't be an openly gay pop star, really - minus Ricky Martin.
There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.
Lying about one's sexuality seems to be one of the ridiculous rules of what constitutes being a Hollywood movie star. Obviously, my own experience of working and continuing to work as an out gay actor is exactly that - working as an actor and not as a movie star. I don't think the two are the same.
The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie.
I was a theater man, so I was never in the situation of being a handsome Hollywood leading man, and then having to age.
I don't even think of myself as particularly good looking, and not at all a typical kind of Hollywood leading man sort of actor.
In Hollywood it seems that you're considered gay until proven otherwise.
I get told a lot that I'm kind of carving my own path. That there are not many actors who are out and are able to play straight and gay, and everyone's OK with it.