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”
