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Adam Baldwin Comes Out

Actor Adam Baldwin, better known to genre fans for guest roles in
series such as The X-Files, Angel and for the memorable character of
Jayne Cobb in Joss Whedon's Firefly (a role which he reprised for the
feature movie version Serenity), has casually come out in an interview
that will be published in the upcoming Frontiers magazine. "Basically,
it's been an on/off thing for me throughout the last 18 years," Baldwin
tells Frontiers. "I've finally decided to be more open about it."

The 44-year-old Baldwin was born in Chicago, but has spent the last 22
year in Los Angeles and has appeared in over 60 movies since he was
chosen in 1980 to play the title role in My Bodyguard. He later played
the character of Animal Mother in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket,
a character that defined the tough guy roles that Baldwin has played
over and over for nearly two decades.

"My dad used to take me to what he called Shoot ' Em Ups" Baldwin told
Fred Topel earlier this year, "The Wild Bunch, The Good, Bad and the
Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, movies with great character
actors like Eli Wallach, Warren Oates, Jason Robards, guys like that
who kind of rang my bell when I was a kid, and later I modeled many of
my favorite characters (like Jayne) after them." In addition to his
feature acting Baldwin, who considers himself "a working class actor,"
has done considerable work on television.

Baldwin often felt close to other boys from a young age, and he deftly
integrated this into his own personal bonding style of camaraderie. "I
just thought this was the way guys generally felt about one another. It
certainly did not occur to me that I was anything but normal".

As a long-haired teenager, Baldwin sometimes struggled with feelings of
shame over the fact that he felt attracted to some of his male friends.
"I had a hard time admitting these feelings to myself and I certainly
didn't want other guys thinking I was a homo. So I went back to the
scruffy tough guy persona. But I was also genuinely angry because my
parents had divorced. I pretended to be a rebel but I was really such a
jerk! I probably overdid it a lot." He laughs. "In retrospect it seems
ironic but being an actor was something that I was doing from very
early on, only I wasn't getting paid for it!" After three years of high
school, Baldwin dropped out and tried a slew of other things.
Eventually he turned to acting and auditioned for My Bodyguard, beating
4,000 other aspirants.

Throughout his years of acting professionally and even for a while
after his marriage, he came to accept that he might be bisexual.
Eventually he grew disillusioned with this posture and came to regard
his bisexual lifestyle as another pretence. "There comes a day when you
quit beating yourself over the head, when you are ready to realize and
make peace with who you really are. And then you say to yourself
'Enough with the pretences. I know what I like, and I like a lot of
it!' But then you are still terrified over how your family is going to
take it, what are they going to think and say!"

Surprisingly, Baldwin's family appeared to take it pretty well. "My
wife has been so incredibly supportive-I would have never gone public
with it if she had not been OK with it-she wasn't shocked or
disappointed, and, you know, we still have this amazingly powerful
relationship going. As for my children, they think I'm this totally
cool dad! I am a very lucky man and my family means a lot to me."

In private, Baldwin has recently talked about his sexuality with some
of his closes friends and associates, including Jamie Lee Curtis and
some members of the cast of Serenity. "They have all been so accepting
and supportive. Jamie had more or less known about it already for a
while, she encouraged me to go public. Nathan [Fillion] was there for
me as usual and Joss [Whedon] in particular was very cool about it, he
was joking about how if they ever agree to fund another [Serenity]
movie, it might be something that he could incorporate into the story."

Does that mean that a substantial retooling of Jayne Cobb's character
might be in the works? Baldwin just laughs. "Joss is brilliant and you
can never tell what might be coming out of that brain of his. But Jayne
is a far more complex character than most people seem to realize. I
mean, if Adam Baldwin can come out of the closet, who is to say that
Jayne cannot? Television and film are increasingly embracing sexual
diversity. Look at Brokeback Mountain. My cowboy heroes were Eli
Wallach and Lee Van Cleef and today you have Heath Ledger and Jake
Gyllenhaal. Whatever Joss comes up with, I think the audience might
just be able to handle it."

Through nearly a quarter of a century of acting, Baldwin has
established himself as a solid and reliable actor, mainly through
all-American "tough guy" roles similar to the ones that inspired him as
a child. Yet he has also managed to inject his own particular
sensitivity into many of them. Perhaps in future roles he will
continue to broaden the horizons of young Americans today, even as his
coming out helps improve the self-image, self-esteem and visibility of
gay Americans males.

Copyright © 2006 AfterElton

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Originally posted by agirlyman:
"Let's be gay guys"

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Originally posted by zoid:

"This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun!"

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Originally posted by agirlyman:
"Let's be gay guys"

Whoa...doesn't have the same badass feel to it.

AM I NOT MERCIFUL?!?!?!?

Tee Hee

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Originally posted by THENCDUCK:
The part that gave it away as being fake to me is about making Jayne gay if there was another movie.

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