Wednesday Morning Man: Christian Campbell!

It was a happy surprise to see Christian Campbell at The Magic Castle on Monday night.  He was among those who watched JoAnne Worley perform her cabaret act and we chatted at the after-party.

Christian, 37, may be most famous for his role as Gabriel in the classic gay indie flick Trick but he has done a lot of work on stage and screen since that 1999 film.

Among his other credits are playing Bobby Warner for a year on ABC’s All My Children, being the voice of the title character in the Max Steel animated series and videos, playing Aiden Quinn’s gay son on the controversial NBC series The Book of Daniel and reprising his award-winning stage role in the Showtime adaptation of Reefer Madness: The Musical.

His stage work also includes replacing Neil Patrick Harris in the London production of the show Tick … Tick… Boom! written by the late Jonathan Larsen who wrote the musical before he wrote Rent. Christian is the co-founder of the Los Angeles-based theatre company Blue Sphere Alliance in which he acts, produces, directs, sings, but also serves as artistic director.

He also recently did a workshop of another musical back east and also filmed Casino Jack starring Kevin Spacey: Says Christian of the film: “My role was to play Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition and that was a lot of fun because I’ve always despise Ralph Reed so to be able to play him was a real treat. A real treat. Yeah, get inside that right-winger.”

Although he is straight and married to actress America Olivo, he has a strong gay following – mostly because of Trick in which he portrayed one of two young gay men, trying to find a place to be alone, one night in Manhattan.

“It stays with me a great deal, absolutely,” Christian said. “It was a career-defining movie, there’s no doubt about that. It’s a movie that plays on Logo in loop and so it’s ever-present, everyone knows about it, it meant something. In the gay community it means a lot for a lot of men in their lives in terms of coming out and feeling more comfortable with who they are. It’s one of the more important films that I’ve done in my life, absolutely.”