Film
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.
Innovative Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman creates films that are at once experimental and personal and that often feature lesbian content.
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.
Acclaimed cinematographer Néstor Almendros earned fame for the painterliness of his film work, but he also directed documentaries exposing the persecution of homosexuals in Castro's Cuba.
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's gay and transsexual themed films present absurd situations framed by the trappings of everyday life.
Influential in shaping British cinema in the 1960s, director Lindsay Anderson, who often presented homoerotic elements in his films violently and disturbingly, was tormented by his homosexuality.
One of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner, Kenneth Anger occupies an important place in the history of experimental filmmaking.
The poster boy of radical and militant queer cinema, Gregg Araki disdains the ghettoizing label of "gay filmmaker."
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.
Award-winning lyricist and playwright Howard Ashman collaborated with Alan Menken on projects as diverse as the stage musical Little Shop of Horrors and the animated Disney film Beauty and the Beast.
The recent popularity of Asian films with English-language audiences has allowed Western audiences a glimpse of Asian gay and lesbian identities and gender ambiguities in high-profile queer films.
The films of Anthony Asquith embody for many viewers a quintessential "Britishness," but the director's discretion and refinement were not merely a facet of his art, but also a highly developed way of life for the gay son of a British prime minister.
The recent efflorescence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer themes in Australian film must be placed in the context of a film industry that, prior to the 1970s, was characterized by social conservatism and censorship.
A leading contemporary American playwright, Jon Robin Baitz produces works that are both morally serious and politically conscious.
Entertainer Josephine Baker achieved acclaim as the twentieth century's first international black female sex symbol, but kept carefully hidden her many sexual liaisons with women, which continued from adolescence to the end of her life.
Award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer Alan Ball, whose work frequently features glbtq characters, has had great success in both film and television.
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.
Award-winning television director Paris Barclay is also an activist for glbtq rights, including marriage equality and the opportunity to adopt children as he and his husband have done.
Writer, director, and producer Clive Barker is best known for his horror fiction and movies, but is also a prolific painter and illustrator, as well as a developer of comic books and computer games.
Accomplished actor and singer John Barrowman has won plaudits as a musical theater star, as well as for his roles in film and television.
Independent filmmaker Paul Bartel's ultimate importance may lie less in his directorial efforts, which are variable in quality, than in his unwavering presence as an inspiring figure in the independent film world, particularly to queer filmmakers.
Singer Lance Bass gained fame as a member of the boy band *Nsync; since coming out in 2006, he has spoken on behalf of glbtq rights.
Actor and designer Bryan Batt achieved fame playing a closeted advertising executive on television, but in his own life he has been active in affirming the naturalness of homosexuality.
Since coming out in 2009, actress Meredith Baxter, best known for her starring role in the ABC situation comedy Family Ties (1982-1989), has become a spokesperson for glbtq rights.
One of the first primetime television actors to come out publicly as a gay person, Amanda Bearse has developed a second career as a film and television director and has become an outspoken advocate of gay visibility.
Film Actors: Gay Male
Film Actors: Lesbian
Liberace
Photography: Gay Male, Pre-Stonewall
Censorship in the Arts
Flynn, Errol