Jane Lynch opens up about the past, being out, and “Vogue” during an in-depth conversation at Outfest

I’ve never seen anyone more comfortable in her stardom than Jane Lynch.

The star of Glee is on everyone’s radar these days thanks to her breakout role of Sue Sylvester on the Fox hit and, at 49, she’s got a wonderful perspective on all the madness swirling around her these days after more than 25 years in showbiz.

She was honored with the Outfest Lifetime Achievement Award on Thursday night, the same day she found out she was nominated for two Emmys (one for Glee the other for a guest spot on Two and a Half Men) and while waiting in the dressing room later that day to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she got a call with congratulations from Carol Burnett!

“When all of this hype starts to fade, and it will, I will continue,” Jane told a sold-out crowd Saturday at the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Variety Associate Editor Peter Debruge, Jane did a lot more than reflect on her current wave of success. She took us back to high school and quitting a one-act play her freshman year to join the tennis team and never being cast in another production.

Fortunately, Illinois State has a first-rate drama department. She then got a Masters from Cornell.

After Cornell, she went back to Chicago and did theater and for some reason, she got into Second City. Out of 150 women, she was one of two chosen to join the touring company: “It was one of these things where destiny slaps you on the face and says, ‘Look this way! Look this way!” It was like handed to me.” It was a lot of money as far as I was concerned. I was able to quit my day job [as a receptionist at a real estate company] and tour around the country with Second City and I started to love sketch  [comedy]. It turned out to be just perfect for my talent.”

Jane and some Second City buddies started off the smash stage hit Real Live Brady Bunch (more on that later this week) and that brought her to Los Angeles where she got work occasional guest spots and she also was also making a good living off of voiceover work.

It was a Frosted Flakes commercial that changed her life and career because it was directed by Christopher Guest. About six months later, he saw her at the News Room Cafe in Beverly Hills and he said, “I have an idea.” By the end of the day she was booked to do Best In Show with Jennifer Coolidge.

Her role was a lesbian but, she said Saturday “I don’t even know if Chris knew I was a Les.” Then she added jokingly: “I’m straight appearing aren’t I?”

She then went on to appear in Guest-directed films A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration but other filmmakers had discovered Jane too and she appeared memorably in the hits The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights and scores of television shows with recurring roles on The L Word, Boston Legal, Criminal Minds, Arrested Development and Help Me, Help You.

She was also a cast member during season one of Party Down and during the single season of Lovespring International directed by her close friend Guy Shalem.

Jane told the capacity crowd of 600 that while thrilled with what Glee has done for her career, she is even happier for the young actors on the show who have become household names overnight.

“They can’t be pains in the asses and do what they do,” she said. “They get up in the morning and they have to sing and dance and they don’t go home until later at night so there has be a focus there and a discipline that just can’t be accompanied by being a pain in the ass. They’re really good people, they’re really show people, they’re really can-do people.”

She is particularly fond of 20-year-old Chris Colfer who plays gay teen Kurt Hummel on the show. He presented Jane with the Outfest award on Thursday (pictured above), is openly gay in real-life and was also nominated for an Emmy.

“That just blew my mind that chris colfer was nominated for an Emmy,” Jane said. “I think the work that he’s doing is so beautiful and truthful and subtle. he’s amazing, he’s a good kid. He’s such a sweetheart and I know that impact is enormous. [Young viewers] are grabbing onto this kid who refuses to be somebody he’s not. He’s so true to himself and so powerful about it.”

Colfer was among the cast members who appeared in what has been a highlight of the show so far and certainly of any episodes featuring Jane: The Madonna episode in which Jane replicated The Material Girl’s performance in the famous video for Vogue.

“I will say I was awesome in that,” she said with a laugh. “… I worked my ass off. It is all editing but I did nail it. We had more production meetings for that baby than we did all season. It was [Glee creator] Ryan Murphy’s baby. We started having production meetings in November and he shot it in March. The lighting was perfection and it shot beautifully, the set pieces were perfect, out dancers were outlandishly good.”

Jane has also been true to herself as an out actress and got a lot of coverage recently when she married psychologist Lara Embry in Massachusetts on Memorial Day.

“I really started to be known when I was 40 and I was a big les by then, I wasn’t turning back. There were stories to be told if I denied it. I didn’t have a moment’s worry about it at all.”

But that was not always the case: “I will say that when I was in my 30s and had no reason to be thinking about fame and fortune at that time, I would lay in  bed and night and think, ‘How would I do this? How would I come out? How would I hide it?” I had restless nights about that. But when it came and people started to care – and kind of not care too – I’m a character actor and you’re allowed to be gay. When you’re an ingenue or a leading man it’s apparently still too hard for America to deal with. And it might not even be America, it might just be studio executives.”

She had plenty of lesbian role models by the time she got famous: “People like Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, KD Lang, Rosie O’Donnell, they were these hip kind of happening personalities who went, ‘Oh by the way I’m gay’ and American went, ‘Okay.’ Then Jane Lynch comes along and it was, ‘I’ll take that path. I feel a little bit of a responsibility – in a good way not like it’s a bother – to do things like this and be very open about who I am and be very open about that fact that I just got married and I’m very happy. … I think the most powerful political statement I can make is to not make one and just talk about it everywhere I go. Everywhere I go they bring it up.”