Queer as he wants to be - Out & About Newspaper

50 • LIVING • OUT & ABOUT NEWSPAPER • APRIL, 2006
Robert Gant talks — continued from page 1
O&AN: I understand that you have a law degree. How
did you go from that to being an actor?
Robert Gant: I was in Nashville when I was 18 and
almost came to Vanderbilt for college but I didn’t get the
scholarship that I needed so I ended up going to the
University of Pennsylvania. I was English major and then
went to law school in Georgetown. After law school I
moved to LA to work for a law firm which closed their
doors very quickly after I arrived. It was then that I decided
to go for my dream of being an actor.
O&AN: You have participated in a number of HRC
events over the past couple years. Why do you feel that
HRC is so important that you devote such a large portion
of your time to them?
RG: I think that there are many groups that are worthwhile.
As I started to heal myself and grow as a person I
experienced a natural expansion of wanting to do that
beyond myself in order to help others. In some ways I started
doing that small at first but “Queer as Folk” really gave
me an opportunity to do that more broadly. I really saw it
as my responsibility to help initiate change particularly in
this area. So, for a little while, I started collecting all of
those little pamphlets that you see for different organizations
until I had a big stack of them. I went through them
all and tried to decide which ones spoke the most to me
and HRC was one of those. It was very important to me to
support a very broad based organization that is a bigger
mouthpiece on behalf of our rights and the bigger movement
towards equality.
O&AN: What was it like for you being first a lawyer then
an actor and having to come out as a gay man?
RG: Like most people it wasn’t a light switch event. It
took many years and many stages. When I was in college I
was in a very jock-type fraternity and raised some eyebrows
in my senior year by wearing a pink armband on Gay
Awareness Day, but I still wouldn’t come out and say it.
Some people can dive right into the waters but I was terrified.
It was a very gradual process. My family could not
have been less supportive. When I first told my mom that I
was coming out on the cover of a national magazine she
screamed at me, “Why don’t you just shoot us in the heart
with a rifle first?” I didn’t come out professionally until I
started on “QAF.” That was a big step forward for me
because I was terrified before that.
O&AN: How did being on “QAF” and almost instantly
becoming one of the most recognizable people in the U.S.
affect your life as a gay man?
RG: It made me have to look at the places in my life
where I was still growing. I realized that now people were
really looking at me where they might not have been
before. I had to make a choice about how I wanted to
show up as a man. It made me turn a lot of attention
toward healing wounds and focusing on internal things like
my relationships and the fears associated with them. I had
a lot of healing to do that I didn’t realize before. I focused
on really giving myself that gift because I really wanted to
be seen as a man of integrity. I took a long hiatus from dating
as a part of that process and I am currently single.
O&AN: Has your celebrity made dating a difficult issue
for you?
RG: It was at the beginning because I took a lot of
adjusting. As a gay kid there was nothing that I wanted
more than to be noticed and to get attention and love.
When I started on “QAF,” finally it was flooding at me and
I had to take a step back to learn how to receive all of that
energy that was so heavily equated with the show. I really
had to learn how to stay grounded. Now it’s not so tough.
I can tell now where people are coming from and it’s a really
interesting thing.
O&AN: Now that “QAF,” which was such a huge part of
your life, is over, do you find yourself missing it?
RG: I do and I don’t. I was very happy to be back in LA.
The winters in Toronto were horrible. I wouldn’t trade the
experience for the world, but I think I’m ready for the next
chapter in my life.
O&AN: What is that chapter going to include?
RG: I have just joined Chad Allen and Christopher
Racster in a new production company called Mythgarden
that is planning a number of gay-centric movie projects
that have a very heart based theme. We are about to begin
shooting on a film called “Save Me” about the ex-gay ministry
alongside Judith Light. It promises to be a lot of fun.
I’m also negotiating a project with Logo that will be lots of
fun, so I’m going to be keeping very busy over the next
couple years. �
Daniel can be reached at
daniel@outandaboutnewspaper.com