Cherry Jones became the first openly-lesbian Tony-Award winner when she was chosen as Best Actress for her performance in a revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's The Heiress (1995, directed by Gerald Gutierrez). In her acceptance speech she thanked her longtime partner, architect Mary O'Connor.

Jones had previously won an Obie Award for her starring role in lesbian playwright Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz (1992, directed by Anne Bogart), a work inspired by Vogel's brother, who had died of AIDS complications; and she has received numerous other award nominations for her acting.

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Far from being a diva, Jones has an unpretentious lifestyle. She bicycles back and forth between the theater and the Greenwich Village studio that she and O'Connor share. Known as a quick study and an "actor's actor," Jones is respected for her professionalism and devotion to her stagecraft.

Speaking of her ground-breaking role as an award-winning openly-lesbian actress, Jones has said, "it means the world to all of those people in all of those places who can't be out."

John Barrowman

Another acclaimed out actor is John Barrowman, a musical theater star in London's West End and a fixture on British television. Barrowman, who was born in Scotland but spent much of his childhood in Illinois, won acclaim in a revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes in 1989, and has subsequently become known especially for his interpretations of the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim.

From the beginning of his career, Barrowman been openly gay. As he told Gay Times interviewer Rupert Smith in 2004, "There's a received idea that being openly gay in the TV industry will limit your ability to get work, but I decided early on that I wouldn't hide anything. If you lie about yourself, then people are going to work very hard to expose that lie. If you're honest, it's not an issue and you can just get on with your life. . . . As far as the public goes, they see me playing different characters, some straight, some gay. They can make their own assumptions."

Barrowman's popularity, not merely in musical theater, but in a variety of roles on British television as well, seems to confirm his belief that openness is the best policy.

Conclusion

The willingness of successful performers such as Barrowman, Jones, McKellen, Callow, and Lane to be open about their sexuality is hopeful. They provide positive role models for gay and lesbian youth and place a human face on the image of homosexuality.

The openness of these actors is a testament to their courage, but it also says something about the changing climate in Europe and America. These actors--unlike, for example, such talented performers as Split Britches or Charles Busch and Ethyl Eichelberger, who play to largely gay and lesbian audiences--are mainstream performers who must depend on the good will of the general public for their livelihood. They could not afford to be open unless they had good reason to think it was safe.

Their confidence is confirmed by the fact that they have not suffered as a result of their openness. That they continue to enjoy success in their field indicates a new level of acceptance of homosexuality among the general public.

Although few gay actors have been permitted the luxury of openness, many of them have challenged and helped reconfigure notions of masculinity and, to a lesser extent, of homosexuality.

Lesbian actresses have played a significant role in Hollywood, but their contributions have rarely been recognized or spoken of openly; the "lavender marriage" is by no means a relic of the past.

The musical has been a significant aspect of American gay male culture, manifesting itself both in diva worship and, more recently, in the presentation of openly gay characters and shows written by gay writers primarily for gay audiences.

Gay and lesbian theater companies attempt to create their own communities, while also fostering a sense of solidarity with the glbtq community and educating the larger society.

Variety and vaudeville and related theatrical forms featured cross-dressed acts, as well as routines that challenged prevailing gender constructions.

Poet, playwright, screenwriter, costume designer, and memoirist, Mercedes de Acosta is remembered today for her love affairs with some of the most glamorous women of her time.

Unlike many child stars, Chad Allen has successfully made the transition to accomplished adult actor; he has also come out as a gay man and become an advocate for glbtq rights.

Lesbian filmmaker Dorothy Arzner, the only woman director in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, made films that convey the varieties of women's experiences and desires and the tenacity of women's relationships with other women.

Although Tallulah Bankhead is today remembered mostly as an irreverent wit and volcanic life force, she was also one of the most significant actresses of her time.

Accomplished actor and singer John Barrowman has won plaudits as a musical theater star, as well as for his roles in film and television.

The most famous actress of her time, Sarah Bernhardt scandalized and titillated Paris by wearing pants, taking men's roles in some of her plays, and having numerous love affairs, some with women.

Actor-writer-director Charles Busch has distinguished himself through his virtuouso performances of "grand dame" characters and through his writing of dramatic vehicles for these roles.

Versatile British actor Simon Callow has played a wide variety of roles on the stage, in films, and on television, but has remarked on his special affinity for gay roles.

Actress and writer Charlotte Charke was known for portraying male characters on the eighteenth-century English stage and for cross-dressing in private life.

Actress Katharine Cornell and director Guthrie McClintic sustained one of the most celebrated partnerships in the American theater for forty years; although married and devoted to each other, both partners pursued same-sex relationships.

Although Coward's plays are about heterosexual couples, they are written in the language and spirit of camp and reject traditional domestic values.

Accomplished playwright, actor, composer, and lyricist, Sir Noël Coward was also a singer and cabaret performer; he dominated the British stage between the world wars, then reoriented his career in the direction of America.

Versatile actor Alan Cumming has performed a wide variety of roles on stage, screen, and television, earning numerous awards for his acting and also for his support of glbtq causes.

One of the most famous actresses of the nineteenth century, Charlotte Cushman was a commanding presence both on and off stage; she used her fortune and fame to champion the work of other women artists, among them her lover Emma Stebbins.

Actress and cabaret performer Marlene Dietrich scandalized society almost as much by wearing trousers in public as by her numerous love affairs with both men and women.

Popular nineteenth-century French actress Marie Dorval enjoyed an intense romantic friendship with the writer George Sand that fueled much speculation among Parisian gossips of the time, as well as among later biographers and historians.

The mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan brought her feminist consciousness to the stage; and in her bohemian private life, she constantly challenged society's rules.

One of the greatest actresses of her day, Eleonora Duse was also known for her tempestuous love affairs, primarily with men, but also with women.

An influential figure in experimental theater, writer and drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger is most remembered for his repertoire of self-penned solo plays based on the lives of the great women of history, literature, and myth.

Award-winning Harvey Fierstein is one of the finest gay male playwrights currently working in the American theater.

Actor Harvey Fierstein has had phenomenal success as both a performer and a playwright, and has been steadfastly committed to the cause of glbtq rights.

Mysterious, aloof, occasionally androgynous, actress Greta Garbo ignited the passions of men and women alike.

Sir John Gielgud has long been acknowledged as one of the greatest British actors of the twentieth century.

Actor Farley Granger is best known for playing strikingly handsome yet emotionally vulnerable young men in classic 1940s films, but his long and productive career encompasses theater and television roles as well.

Actor, dancer, and choreographer, Sir Robert Helpmann was present at the creation of premier ballet companies in both Great Britain and Australia.

The first woman to gain significant attention as a male impersonator in the United States, vaudeville performer Annie Hindle created a stir when she married her dresser, Annie Ryan.

Acclaimed comic actor John Inman gained international fame for his endearing portrayal of the fey salesman Mr. Humphries on the television series Are You Being Served?.

In both his films and his writings, Derek Jarman's explicit project was to celebrate gay sexuality and imagine a place for it in English culture.

Versatile American actress Cherry Jones became the first out lesbian to win a Tony Award when she was chosen as Best Actress in 1995.

Highly-acclaimed actor Nathan Lane is not only openly gay himself, but has portrayed gay characters in several plays and films.

Anglo-American stage and screen actor and director Charles Laughton scored many triumphs in a distinguished career, but nevertheless suffered for much of his life from self-loathing and internalized homophobia.

Actress, director, producer, teacher, and memoirist, as well as translator, Eva Le Gallienne was one of the most successful figures in the American theater for several decades; she had many lovers, but was never comfortable with her lesbianism.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were known as the first family of the American theater, but theirs was a lavender marriage and their presentation of themselves as the ideal married couple may have been their greatest performance.

Out lesbian actress Jane Lynch has forged a successful career on television, in movies, and on the stage, including some memorable turns portraying lesbian characters.

Arguably the finest Shakespearean actor of his generation, Ian McKellen was the first British subject to be knighted after publicly revealing his homosexuality, an event that proved more controversial within the gay community than in the mainstream.

Texas-reared Terrence McNally, whose first play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, was one of the great scandals of the 1964 New York season, emerged in the 1990s as America's most important gay playwright since Tennessee Williams.

Although she was not publicly out as a homosexual, actress Agnes Moorehead became a lesbian icon by virtue of her choice of roles during a long and distinguished career.

Award-winning actress Cynthia Nixon recently acknowledged publicly that she is bisexual and in a loving relationship with a woman.

Show business renaissance man extraordinaire, Ivor Novello not only composed the scores of musical comedies, but also acted in films while dominating the London stage as a playwright and romantic leading man for three decades.

In his personal life, American actor Anthony Perkins often seemed as tortured as the troubled characters he played on film, hiding--and perhaps despising--his true nature while desperately seeking happiness and "normality."

Award-winning actor David Hyde Pierce, best known for his comic performance on the long-running hit comedy television series Frasier, belatedly acknowledged his homosexuality in 2007.

Widely admired for her talent and beauty, eighteenth-century French actress Françoise Raucourt lived openly with a series of female lovers.

Funnyman Charles Nelson Reilly gained fame during the 1970s as a regular guest on game shows and celebrity talk shows, but he was also an accomplished character actor, director, and teacher.

As one of the key figures that western civilization has used to define itself, William Shakespeare stands in a complicated, fiercely contested relationship to homosexuality.

Emma Stebbins is remembered for the sculpture that she produced between 1859 and 1869 and for being the lover of actress Charlotte Cushman.

In her work, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel has tackled difficult topics, including AIDS, incest, and prostitution.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.

Film, stage, and television actor Paul Winfield was openly gay in his private life, but maintained public silence about his homosexuality.