Thom Bierdz: The Advocate Interview

I got a nice email from Thom Bierdz today thanking me for the coverage I’ve been giving his surprise return to The Young and the Restless. Whether he’s acting or painting or writing, Thom sure keeps things interesting and it is a pleasure to write about someone so honest.

Advocate.com has just posted the first extensive interview with Thom since the big soap return last Friday and I wanted to share some excerpts with you:

How was it coming back to the show?
It was really cool coming back to the show, since it’s almost been exactly 20 years since I was on as a principal player. That is shocking and amusing to me; the fact that time goes by so quick. So to come back now as an out gay man and to know that I don’t have to hide anything about myself is a great feeling. But in my 20s I felt I had to have this charade and felt like I had to say I was straight. Now I don’t feel that. I feel that I am appreciated for my sexuality. I think it’s a very exciting time, all over the place and especially in my life.

When you were on the show in the late ’80s, was it difficult being a younger leading man in soaps, when you were gay?
My agent had told me not to come out. I spoke to my manager about it and he did not think it was a smart idea. Also, in the later ’80s when I was on Y&R. this is when AIDS was becoming prevalent, and a lot of people thought if you were gay that meant you had AIDS. It was a scary time to come out, and I think since then we realized gay does not mean AIDS. We have had so many more homosexuals on TV and in our lives through reality TV and with shows like Ellen that people are not stereotyping homosexuality as much as they used to. It’s a whole new era, and it has shocked me how open young people are today.

Do you feel now that you’re out as a gay man in acting that you feel better about yourself than you did, let’s say, five or 10 years ago?
Last year, I was walking around my place, and even though I was doing really well in art sales, I was getting jealous of other actors that were doing significant roles… and they were out gay actors. Then a month later, someone called me out of the blue and had cast me in the lead of this gay love story. I was so excited to pursue this, and it fell through and it never happened! That whet my appetite again, and I thought, You know what? There is so much I have not given on the screen that I now feel today that I can really give.

In closing, since everyone sees you as the heartthrob and you are so good-looking, do you see yourself as that? Gay men struggle with this all the time.I think that’s all subjective. I did not find myself attractive as a young person in my 20s and in my 30s, and I did have some cosmetic work done. I had my ears pinned back. I had liposuction, and I had some silicone put in my jaw because I wanted to look stronger. I wanted to look more like a man. I was just at the gym two hours ago and I was working out, and I still don’t like the way I look. But what can you do about it? I don’t know.