Glee star Jane Lynch says being openly gay has never held her back on screen

WHEN Ellen DeGeneres came out on her sitcom in the late 1990s the episode screened with a parental warning about the show's content.

Many predicted DeGeneres' daring move would spell the end of her career.

And it did -for a while.

DeGeneres's sitcom was canned, her movie career faltered and she had a bitter and well-publicised split with Men in Trees star Anne Heche.

Then the blonde comic did the unthinkable.

She reinvented herself as a talk-show host, hooked up with Aussie actor Portia de Rossi and became the toast of conservative middle America - the very people who had raised their eyebrows and reached for their remote controls when she dared admit she was gay.

A lot has changed, it seems, in the 10 years since that milestone episode of primetime television.

The Emmy Award-winning Desperate Housewives features three openly gay characters.

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Two of Grey's Anatomy's leading ladies have had a loving lesbian partnership on screen.

In an episode of Little Britain, comedian Matt Lucas openly poked fun at Hollywood actor Rosie O'Donnell's sexuality, describing in graphic detail what she does in the bedroom.

And The L Word, a series covering the lives and loves of lesbians in LA, was a hit in the United States.

As with DeGeneres, Glee star Jane Lynch made what some would consider the risky decision to be open about her sexuality.



Lynch has made a name for herself playing oddballs from the butch dog handler in the almost completely improvised Best in Show to James Spader's "sexual surrogate" in Boston Legal.


One of the few openly gay women in Hollywood, Lynch says her sexuality has not hampered her career.


"If it has it's been behind my back," she says with a laugh.


"It's not been a problem because I don't play those kinds of roles.


"I play the mum, or the married woman. It would be different if I were playing the love interest.


"Maybe it's because Americans like to project their hopes and dreams on to those characters and it would somehow be less believable for them if it (the love interest) were played by a gay actor. So it's not a problem for me.


"But for movie stars, it still is. They are royalty.


"Meg Ryan is America's sweetheart. It would be an issue if she were gay."


In an interview with the UK's Mirror, Lynch, who plays coach Sue Sylvester in Glee, explained why she didn't tell her parents she was a lesbian until she was 31.


"I didn't want to be gay. I wanted to be... I wanted an easy life. And you know what?


I am gay and I still have an easy life." And a happy one.


Lynch is reportedly planning her wedding with partner Lara Embry.


Embry is a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at New College in Sarasota, Florida.


She made her own headlines in 2009, when a Florida court ruled she had the right to share custody of a child she had adopted with her ex-girlfriend, and, more widely, that the State of Florida had to accept the validity of other states' gay-parent adoptions.


Lynch has said of her marriage plans: "I have a ring and everything. We're very happy and very excited... it's just the greatest thrill in the world to find somebody who you want to be with every day."


Lynch was born and raised in Illinois in the US and studied theatre before writing and starring in her award-winning play Oh Sister, My Sister in the late 1990s.


In 2005 she was named as one of Power Up's 10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz.


Though she has played several lesbians on screen, Lynch is quick to say the roles rarely are a reflection of who she is in real life. When asked which character she has played that she most resembles, Lynch told AfterEllen.com her role as Dr Freeman in Two and a Half Men was the closest.


"I did play this therapist on Two and a Half Men who jumps to conclusions too quickly," Lynch says.


"She listens, but she doesn't hear. Sometimes I do that."

via: heraldsun.com

Category: News