we ve perhaps talked enough about captain kirk. we ve just talked about boldness and here s a thought for you ijust think in your activism, you ve reflected a great deal on the different causes that you ve fought for over the years. you didn t, for a long time, fight for perhaps the cause most dear to your own heart that is gay rights, equality for gay people, because you were a gay actor in hollywood for an awful long time who stayed in the closet. why? because i wanted to be an actor. i passionately wanted to be an actor. when i was a teenager, my heart throb was a handsome, young blonde actor named tab hunter. he was starring in almost every warner. he had a warner bros contract, every movie coming from the warner bros studio battle cry, damn yankees. i went and saw every one of them until he was exposed, by one of our scandal sheets as being gay, and suddenly he disappeared. it was forcefully made.
i just think in your activism, you ve reflected a great deal on the different causes that you ve fought for over the years. you didn t, for a long time, fight for perhaps the cause most dear to your own heart that is gay rights, equality for gay people, because you were a gay actor in hollywood for an awful long time who stayed in the closet. why? because i wanted to be an actor. i passionately wanted to be an actor. when i was a teenager, my heart throb was a handsome, young blonde actor named tab hunter. he was starring in almost every warner. he had a warner bros contract, every movie coming from the warner bros studio battle cry, damn yankees. i went and saw every one of them until he was exposed, by one of our scandal sheets as being gay,
because i wanted to be an actor. i passionately wanted to be an actor. when i was a teenager, my heart throb was a handsome, young blonde actor named tab hunter. he was starring in almost every warner. he had a warner bros contract, every movie coming from the warner bros studio battle cry, damn yankees. i went and saw every one of them until he was exposed, by one of our scandal sheets as being gay, and suddenly he disappeared. it was forcefully made. it forcefully made me understand that you cannot be gay and be hired as an actor. and so i spent my childhood behind barbed wire fences, but as an adult, i self imposed an invisible barbed wire fence on myself.
she was even jeered at a televised soul train award show. must be horrible. it is horrible, it s funny, you go are they booing me, yeah, oh, how nice. too perfect, too polished. those images were scuffed up by the 1990s when miss goody goody took up with r & b singer, bobby brown. a bad reputation and rap sheet to match. their marriage resulted in a daughter and enough bad ink to fill a year s worth of scandal sheets. whitney had become a soap opera, no-show, difficult star. i would watch from afar and say please, let this stop. and she couldn t hit those effortless high notes anymore. audiences walked out on off-key, off-kilter performances. doing drugs and booze with her bad boy husband. addiction is powerful, and her struggles with it were
into the rest of life, then you run a risk of that, it s hard to be cute and really sexy. i mean, i don t think it really is hard to be but (laughter) it s just the business perceives you differently and so, that never was my thing early on and even though i wanted those parts, i just didn t get them. and so, you know. mike: how are you been able to maybe one of most normal lives of anybody within the screen industry. married 30 years, the same gentleman. you have four wonderful children. you live a normal life, you re he not on the scandal sheets all the time. what is the key to that that maybe you would pass on to younger actors and artists and say, look, here is the way to make this thing last for a lifetime? well, i just think a lot of it is serendipity and also, i probably, for me, i got a