OUT Magazine Catches Up Isabella Rossellini About Sexuality, Madonna's Sex Book & More

Just when you thought you’d seen it all, Isabella Rossellini, one of the world’s most beautiful women, turns up on the Sundance Channel swimming in a construction paper sea beside two male dolphin puppets engaging in blowhole sex.

Now, the model, actress, writer, and expert on the sex lives of animals chats with OUT Magazine about unusual mating habits, her thoughts on sexuality as she’s gotten older, and what she really thinks of Madonna’s Sex book.

Here are some highlights:

Thoughts on sexuality as she gets older:
“I look at it differently now because I was born in Italy, a Catholic country, where I grew up thinking you should be a virgin at marriage. And now if somebody says, “I’m a virgin and I’m getting married,” I would be a little worried. Maybe she hasn’t had enough experience, like, oh my God, how can she even say that word? How much you can change. I was born in a country where gays were looked as something that had to be re-educated. Maybe they weren’t the most compassionate, they would look at it as a disease, and most radicals had to be thrown in jail. My cousin was gay and he was hiding it and not talking about it and by the time we were 40, I was going out with him and his gay friends. There was an enormous change in my generation. Finally, a feeling that my cousin — he died, unfortunately — that he was great and it was such a waste of time that he had suffered for so many years to keep this a secret. It’s all for the better to be more open.”

On women being objectified:
“I think if I had to choose a period in history to be born in, I would choose this one. It has been the moment when women have been able to express themselves not only as sexual object — that was a given from the beginning — but also, look at me. I’ve been a model, I became an actress, I’m a writer, I’m making my film, I’m becoming a filmmaker. I don’t know that this was allowed a few years ago, when I would have just stayed a beautiful woman. That was it and then they would say, “She used to be beautiful. Life is tough.” Now, I can evolve. I think that’s what this generation allows.”

On Madonna’s Sex book:
I don’t think the book worked, even though the photos were extraordinary and some of them quite memorable. I think there was a little bit of a moralistic sort of “I’ll teach you how to be free!” and that bothered the hell out of me. Because I think if you want to practice abstinence and that makes you happy, you are OK. If you want to be gay, that’s OK. If you want to screw anything that moves, that’s OK. It’s funny to use the word moralistic for that book because people probably don’t put those together, but it was a little bit of “I know better!” and didn’t like that.

Read the full interview by clicking here.

Out 100's Entertainer of the Year: Ricky Martin

On March 29th of this year, Ricky Martin made a decision that would change everything. He posted a letter on his website and linked to it from Twitter. The letter outlined the process of writing his upcoming memoir, during which Martin came to realize that he needed to free himself of a particular burden. Writing about it, he added, was “a solid step toward my inner peace and vital part of my evolution.” He closed the letter, with a beautiful, eloquent, and simple declaration: “I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.”

It is a warm October afternoon in Miami Beach, and the fortunate homosexual man is tearing up. We’ve just started talking, but Martin can barely contain his elation. It is sweet and touching and genuine. When I suggest that few of his fans could have imagined in January that he would be on the cover of this year’s Out100, he has to steady himself, sucking in the air and releasing it in a low, long exhalation. The hum of jet skis and motorboats on Biscayne Bay fills the silence. A breeze shifts the long, white drapes that separate the living room from Martin’s waterfront garden. “I get emotional,” he says, finally, fanning the air gently with his hand. “What a beautiful way to start.”

He’s right. There is something beautiful in witnessing a major celebrity in the throes of profound and real transformation. A week before we meet, Martin had made a surprise appearance at the annual Human Rights Campaign national dinner to pledge his support. “Something as simple as standing at that dinner and saying, ‘I’m gay,’ creates so may emotions I’ve never felt before,” he admits. “I didn’t do it earlier because of fear, and, bottom line, it was all in my head. I was seduced by fear, and I was sabotaging most of my life -- my music, my relationships with my friends, with my family, with everybody. That’s something I need to share because I know that a lot of people are going through what I went through, no matter what their age, and fear cannot control us.”

Martin is about to share big time -- with his new memoir, Me, a remarkably heartfelt account of his journey from teen group Menudo to fatherhood, delivered in a frank, conversational style that doesn’t economize on the truth. It includes accounts of his first passionate affairs -- with men and with women -- as well as his struggle to reconcile his conflicted yearnings with his rapid ascent in America. The pivotal year is 1999, at which Martin performed his World Cup anthem, “La Copa de la Vida,” at the Grammys. Largely unknown in the United States beyond Hispanic audiences, he left the stage as a breathless Rosie O’Donnell (the evening’s host) exclaimed, “Who was that cutie patootie?” Between that quip and the well-intended advice of Madonna to “stop doing interviews -- everyone knows who you are” were a few short hops separated by 17 million album sales for his first English-language album, Ricky Martin, covers on Time and People, and a 25-date U.S. tour that sold out in eight minutes.

Contrary to Madonna’s comment, it’s arguable whether Martin even knew himself. In Me, he presents much of his life as a subconscious effort to avoid confronting unpalatable truths. It’s one explanation for his nonstop work ethic. He was always, he says, a performer who didn’t know how to say no -- “perhaps because if I stopped I would start to think.” A growing interest in India -- a giant Buddha stares passively from his hallway -- would eventually help him resolve those tensions and lead to the introspection that animates his memoir. “In this book, I am sharing the moments that triggered intensity, like passion and love, and that brought me to a place of understanding or a place where I really started asking a lot of questions, connecting the dots,” he says.

It was connecting the dots that led directly to Martin’s tweet last March. In his memoir, he recounts how friends and colleagues remonstrated with him to hold off: “I ignored all their recommendations, and by the end, when they came to me with the argument that I shouldn’t do it during Easter because it might offend my Christian fans, I said: ‘What part of ‘I can’t take it any more’ do you not understand? What about me?’”

Two people who didn’t intervene to stop Martin were his parents. “My father is an amazing human being,” says Martin. “He was the first one to tell me, ‘Come on, share your love.’ ” As for his mother, she flew to Miami for a visit the same day he published his letter. Martin held off posting it until he knew she was safely in the air, beyond the reach of gossipy chatter, and made her read it the moment she arrived at his house. “As soon as she finished,” he writes, “she stood up, gave me a great big hug, and started to cry like a baby.”

M artin is not the first pop star to come out -- a string of musicians got there before him, but while many enjoyed significant fame none has achieved such stratospheric heights of idoldom. And none had to contend with the dual responsibilities of being gay and a crossover Latin music star -- or a “symbol of the new status Latin culture holds in mainstream America,” as The New York Times dubbed him in 1999. That seems like an awful lot of symbolism for one man’s shoulders. Martin shrugs. “I am a minority twice,” he says. “I am Hispanic, and I am a gay man, and they both struggle. Is it a big responsibility? It can be as big as I want it to be, and I believe there’s a lot still to come.”

Martin doesn’t skate over the oppressiveness of Latin machismo that made his coming-out such a milestone back home, one not always appreciated by the press and bloggers in the West who treated it as no big deal. At the same time, he insists that his own “Latin lover” vibe was always genuine. “A lot of people go, ‘Wait a minute, so ‘She Bangs’ became a ‘He Bangs?’ ” -- he laughs -- “No, I never lied. That was my truth at that moment. And when you are on stage you just are. Mind you, as an entertainer if you make a move and you get a reaction, trust me, you are going to make that move again -- that’s what we entertainers live off. Do I think it’s going to be the same now? I don’t know, and,” -- his voice drops to an urgent whisper again -- “it doesn’t matter. It feels so good that it can’t be wrong.”

Not content to represent two minorities when he could represent three, Martin became a single parent just over two years ago after identifying a surrogate mother on the Internet. He thinks now that he was dealing with a lot of residual guilt for having abandoned his younger brothers when he joined the gilded cage that was Menudo, but he was also inspired by his work with his children’s foundation, launched to help disabled children in Puerto Rico and later broadened to combat child trafficking and prostitution. In Me, he robustly rejects criticism of his choice to raise his twin boys, Matteo and Valentino, alone, with some familiar arguments -- many great people are the products of single parents -- and some less so. All families are different, he says, before adding, with a priceless flourish, “being unique is fabulous.”

As it happens, his two boys do have another man in their life, one who does not materialize in Me, but who has recently become a major part of Martin’s world. “I am in a relationship, and I am in love, and it’s incredible that I’m actually talking about it,” he says, adding that it’s not in the book because it was too soon to write about it. “It was a moment to nurture a relationship, not a moment to talk about it. And I was living one day at a time in this relationship because I was a father first and foremost -- I wasn’t looking for anyone.” Martin won’t reveal much more, except to say that his partner is also from Puerto Rico and loves his children and is loved by them in turn.

In the end, of course, everything is connected (back to those dots again) and Martin credits his boys for lighting the fuse that led him to come out. The turning point was that chapter about fatherhood. As he pondered why he’d wanted children, he cycled back through a chain of linked events and consequences. “Why did I decide to be a father? Because of my work with my foundation. Why my work with my foundation? Because of my trips to India. Why did I want to go to India? Because I wanted to detach from fame, because I wanted to look for silence. Why? Because I didn’t like interviews, I didn’t like being famous. Why was that? Because maybe I was being invaded by questions about my sexuality. Hmmm. Why did I feel invaded?”

Above all, he says he worried about Matteo and Valentino having to answer for their father’s untruths. How would they respond as they grew older? Would they have to lie on his behalf? “How could I teach my kids to lie?” he asks. “How could I teach them not to be themselves?” And, as simple as that, he realized he couldn’t and wouldn’t. “My children will grow up with no prejudice,” he says. “As parents, we need to create a new way of thinking for our kids, in which we accept, and we love, and we can vibe with everybody.”

On cue, it seems, the boys awake from their afternoon nap and are brought downstairs to daddy. Martin has a small retinue of loyal and longtime staff, more like family, and they start clucking and fussing over the kids, amusing them with clown faces as they run around the lawn grabbing at flowers to present to the adults, tokens of their affection. Martin laughs as they stumble in their haste and launches into a proud-father monologue, detailing their quirks and foibles: how Valentino insists on eating with his hands, covering his face with pasta; how he jokes that Matteo is “half Puerto Rican and half Chinese” because of his overweening fondness for rice. And he frets about separation issues when he returns to Broadway in 2012 to play Che in the revival of Evita, his first stage role since he played Marius in Les Misèrables in 1995, before reassuring himself that other Broadway parents deal with much the same.

And there is, of course, his new partner. Martin imagines a day when he’ll be walking down a red carpet with his man and his boys, right behind Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka and their twin kids. “How awesome will that be?” he asks. Well, very.

See all of the 2010 Out 100 honorees here.

OUT 100 Cover Revealed!

OUT Magazine has revealedts complete list of the annual Out 100.

The list is mostly made up of openly gay people but also included are some straight allies. Click HERE to see all of the honorees who were all photographed in one of three distinctly different gatherings — Studio 54, the Stonewall Riots, and Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball.

Out chronicles the 100 LGBT movers and shakers who made big impressions on the cultural and social fabrics of this year.

Here are the 16th Annual Out 100 Cover Award Honorees:

Entertainer of the Year — Ricky Martin: “I am Hispanic, and I am a gay man, and they both struggle. Is it a big responsibility? It can be as big as I want it to be,” Martin tells Out. Embracing both fatherhood and new status as a gay role model, Martin, who opens up in his new memoir, Me, looks forward to teaching his twin boys acceptance and love and a day when he proudly walks them down the red carpet!

Diva of the Year — Johnny Weir: “Every little boy should be so lucky as to turn into me,” Weir declared unapologetically after two Canadian broadcasters suggested he undergo a “gender test” during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. With his flair for flamboyance and commitment to glamour, Weir never shies away from controversy—or pageantry. As to the ubiquitous questions surrounding his sexuality, Weir’s opinion remains clear. “I’m not ashamed of anything, but I want it to be out there in my own words.”

Artist of the Year — Julianne Moore: “I don’t think a movie like The Kids Are All Right could be made if this wasn’t the way that families are living today all over the United States,” Moore states. The actress, a four-time Oscar nominee, began her activism some 25 years ago after her first experience with what would become the AIDS pandemic. Now, although she works to keep politics and career separate, Moore notes, “I choose a part because I’m interested in the role, the director, the script. I don’t go looking for something that seem political, but by virtue of the roles being intensely personal, it becomes that way.”

Newsmaker of the Year — Rachel Maddow: Growing up in the time of the AIDS pandemic gave Maddow a compelling perspective on the state of gay activism, especially now in the age of Obama. “We continue to have a sort of lackadaisical gay political movement that has a relationship with Democrat politicians that doesn’t serve gay rights: ‘We want to be close to you.’ Beautiful! But if we’re not getting anything for that, then it’s actually counterproductive.” Now Maddow’s self-titled MSNBC news hour serves as appointment TV for anyone even halfway interested in the surreal theater of American politics amid the surging tide of anti-Washington sentiment.

Stylemaker of the Year – Nate Berkus: Oprah protégé Berkus recently became the first openly gay man to host a daily nationally syndicated television show, and the guru is not taking that responsibility lightly. “Having a daily show is an opportunity for me not to push a political agenda, but to speak out for tolerance and understanding and equality,” he notes. “I’ve been given an enormous opportunity, and I plan to use it responsibly.” Berkus has already proved his commitment to responsibility, having recently appeared on Larry King Live and delivered a compelling plea to America to stop antigay bullying.

Out Editor Aaron Hicklin says of the selections: “For this year’s cover, the five honorees all reflect major breakthroughs in the profile of the LGBTQ community, including one of the most successful pop stars of all time, a leading commentator on politics and current affairs, a wildly entertaining Olympic ice skater who captured everyone’s imagination in Vancouver this year, the first openly gay male host of a daytime TV show, and the fabulous LGBT ally Julianne Moore, star of The Kids Are All Right, a boundary-pushing movie that quietly and profoundly lent legitimacy to our relationships and families."

Cheyenne Jackson: The Entertainer

With a plum new role on Glee and a repeat gig on 30 Rock, Cheyenne Jackson puts to rest the old Hollywood axiom that being gay doesn't pay.

Fast-forward past the small-town childhood, and the stubborn, insistent facts of an austere upbringing -- an outhouse, no running water (“I promised my mom I would quit talking about it.”). Skip the reproving sign atop the TV set -- If Jesus lived here would you be watching this? -- and the ban on unwholesome music. Start, instead, in the Gulf of Mexico with the bang of an epiphany -- every good story needs one, and Cheyenne Jackson’s is a peach.

It is July 1993. Along with his fellow teen missionaries, the young Jackson is handing out New Testaments, bumper stickers, and smiles. The bumper stickers read diga no a la pornografía (say no to pornography), and the trick is to catch drivers as they pause at the stoplight. “It was so bizarre and misguided,” says Jackson. “People were shamed into letting us put them on their car, but then the light would turn green and -- you know, bumper stickers! You have to do it clean and smoothly.” He mimics the act of smoothing out the wrinkles as cars lurch forward, the smiling missionaries staggering in their wake. It’s a funny image; the kind of thing Tina Fey might crib as back story for Kenneth the Page, the doltish office drudge on 30 Rock, in which Jackson has a recurring role. But it’s not a punch line on NBC, and the memory stirs complicated emotions for the teller. Jackson’s instinct is to charm and entertain, but the easy grace he projects is also a smoke screen. There are things still being worked out, processed. “This is gonna get deep,” he warns. “I don’t know if I want to say this.” He swallows, composes himself, and summons the memory.

It is July 12, and the missionaries are at the beach to celebrate Jackson’s 18th birthday. There is a cake, dyed blue. There is Jackson’s girlfriend, Willow (“We always said we were gonna name our kid Shiloh. Like, combine our names.”). The boys and girls are singing Jesus songs, playing guitar, weeping tears of gratitude and joy, but Jackson is not among them. He is out in the ocean, treading water, gazing back on the scene.

“I never felt further away from who I really am,” he says. “I’m ready to go out in the world and be who I’m supposed to be, but I am so conflicted because the church and everything in that world is telling me that who I am is wrong, just wrong. And I know I’m a good person, I know that I treat people with kindness and that I try to make the world a better place. How can who I am be wrong? And in that moment I just know that something has to change. I have to acknowledge it. I’ve never said it out loud, like ‘I’m gay.’ I go pretty far down underwater, not trying to hurt myself, or anything, but it’s the sense that I want to sink. And I look up and I can see the sun above the water, and it’s almost as if I feel something reach in and pull me up. And when I surface I am totally different. I’ve made a decision. And I look at the kids, and for once I don’t feel disdain or wish I could feel what they are feeling. I don’t wish that I could have real tears when I close my eyes to pray. I feel like this is the first day.”

Jackson turned 35 this summer, celebrating with a small birthday party at Paris Commune, a restaurant in New York City’s West Village. It was a typically low-key affair. The actor Alan Cumming came by with his partner. Ricki Lake stopped in for a quick toast. Jackson ordered the halibut and a gin and tonic. It was a busy time for the actor. He’d just filmed an episode for the eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and was due to start filming a movie, The Green, starring opposite Julia Ormond, in which Jackson plays the partner of a drama teacher (Jason Butler Harner) caught up in a sexual harassment case. Although a project with HBO had recently fallen through, the actor had just been told that Ryan Murphy had written him into the third season of Glee, as the new coach of Vocal Adrenaline, and his mood was buoyant. In the eight years since he moved to New York City, he’s built an enviable résumé of successful Broadway roles, including Chad in All Shook Up and Sonny in the Tony-nominated pop opera Xanadu, as well as his role in 30 Rock, but he wears his fame lightly, never playing the diva or taking his success for granted. It’s a quality that sets him apart from many of his peers. “He’s just so low-key and undemanding and unpretentious with his approach and his delivery -- there are no boundaries, no rules, which is unique in that business,” says the designer Kenneth Cole who knows Jackson through his work for amfAR, the AIDS research foundation of which Cole is chairman. For David Mixner, a long time gay activist and fundraiser, Jackson is “a man who not only has heart but gives it to this community unconditionally.”

A few months after that birthday dinner, Jackson and his partner of more than 10 years, Monte Lapka, walked into New York’s City Hall and registered as domestic partners. “We wanted to get as married as we could,” says Jackson. “I think we were filling in some forms for wills or insurance, and I just thought, Let’s just make this as legal as we can. It was with a bunch of Russian mail order brides, literally. And it was hilarious and it was romantic, just he and me, our little secret.” Although Lapka, a trained physicist, is apparently ambivalent about marriage proper, his status on Jackson’s Wikipedia page is already listed as “spouse.” The boy of 18 who had never said “I’m gay” has come a long way.

Truth to tell, Jackson’s journey has its roots a decade before his dunk in the ocean, in the showers of a local health club in Newport, Washington (population 1,921), where a young Cheyenne found himself staring a little too intensely at his Christian scout leader. He was 7 or 8 at the time. “I remember seeing him and feeling just different -- my stomach was tingly, and I felt weird, and I liked it,” he remembers. As casually as possible, Jackson asked the scout leader if he knew where he might find his father, though the question was superfluous. “He was like, ‘No, Cheyenne, I haven’t seen him.’ And I ran back upstairs and pretended that I was still looking for my dad and ran down again so I could get another peek. I was like, ‘I can’t find him anywhere, know where he is?’ ‘No, I still don’t know.’"

Jackson’s performance in the showers that day was the first inkling of what was to come, a harbinger of years of nimble dissembling and self-denial. What was, perhaps, less predictable was that the church should be the beneficiary of all those pent-up emotions and repressed energies. But for the 8-year-old Jackson, the church represented music, singing, escape. “Singing was everything to me,” he says. “It gave me hope.” It also gave him an audience. As worship leader at the age of 14, he got to lead the congregation in a handful of songs preceding the sermon, an early platform for his musical gifts and a galvanizing insight into the power of song to connect and inspire. (At a September fundraiser for Fight Back New York, a pressure group aimed at removing anti-equality state senators from office, you could detect this influence in the quiet fervor with which he sang Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”).

Jackson readily admits that the church planted the seeds of service that now finds expression in his work for amfAR and the Point Foundation. Digging ditches in Mexico and working in orphanages made him feel less powerless, less self-absorbed. It’s not a stretch to say that the church prepared him to be the advocate he’s become, one of the few entertainers unafraid to be out and outspoken. That’s a rare combination in a culture where knee-jerk homophobia keeps most actors in the closet until they’re shamed or driven out of it. Entertaining and activism don’t always go hand-in-hand, but Jackson is helped by his old-school charm. He has a quick, broad smile and a gentle wit that would have made him an excellent leading man in the screwball comedies that Hollywood turned out in the 1930s and ’40s, movies like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday. It’s the kind of quality that makes people take out their checkbooks at the end of a long fundraising dinner.

“He has such a big and tender heart,” says Sherri Jackson on the telephone from Newport. She has been counting off all of the shows in which she’s seen her son perform, starting with Bye Bye Birdie and Li’l Abner in high school -- “he was in a show choir, which was a lot like Glee” -- through his early career in Seattle and his headline-grabbing roles on Broadway. When United 93, in which Jackson played gay hero Mark Bingham, came to the local Roxy in 2006 -- “the town was so supportive, the editor of the newspaper even wrote an editorial about it” -- she circled around every night just to count how many people were there. “I haven’t missed a thing he’s done,” she says, before pausing to correct this sweeping statement. “Actually, the only one I’ve missed,” -- she lets out a long, ironic laugh -- “is The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. That was a little raw. And I think I missed Rocky, as well, in Seattle.”

The omissions are telling. Prominent members of their church and local community, the Jacksons were born-again Christians with a devout belief in the teachings of the Bible. Jackson’s father was a police officer and undersheriff with a love of Westerns (Cheyenne was named after the long-running TV show starring Clint Walker as the eponymous gun-slinging hero, and not the Native American tribe from which he is partly descended). His mother was a police dispatcher. Church was compulsory, twice a week for three-and-a-half hours at a time, plus Sunday School. At home, they played Christian music -- Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Sandi Patty, and DeGarmo & Key. Jackson, who still remembers the Spokane Christian bookstore pulling Amy Grant’s CDs in retaliation for her “secular” duet with Peter Cetera, says he’s had to play catch-up on a lot of pop culture from his childhood. (Maybe a little too much; Lapka complains that Jackson is addicted to “what I call train-wreck TV, and I hate all of those reality shows.”)

Although Sherri Jackson does not dwell on the complicated reconciliation that followed her son’s coming out -- he called a meeting to address his parents and three siblings when he was 19 -- it’s clear that it was a long, painful process. “It was a difficult time,” she concedes. “It can be real divisive, but I feel we weathered it very well. I feel it opens your heart. I feel I’ve become more openhearted, because otherwise the world can be black and white, and it isn’t. It’s good to grow.”

Perversely, given the religious tenor of his upbringing, to say nothing of that stern warning on the TV set, no effort was made to deter young Cheyenne from worshiping another major deity: Wonder Woman. Even from a distance of 25 years, the memory of his weekly Lynda Carter fix gives Jackson goosebumps. A few years ago, his father found an old woodburning art kit of the kind once popular among boy scouts. The idea was to use a woodburning pen to etch around a suitably masculine image on a piece of wood, in this case a muscle car. Jackson, however, must have lost interest part way through. “It was as if I started it and was, like, ‘Eh, I don’t want to do that.’ And then I turn it over, and on the other side, I’d freehanded a portrait of Wonder Woman. Not only that, I’d added watercolors. I had her blue undies and her red thing. I just thought that was a perfect encapsulation of me as a child.”

The etching is now up on his fridge in the Manhattan apartment he shares with Lapka. “It’s one of my favorite things just because what it represents is so personal,” he says. “I know exactly what I felt like being that 8-year-old boy in Idaho where there are no gay people -- well, there are two gay people, they’re called the dump dykes, and they run the dump -- and no black people. It’s 40 miles from the Aryan Nation’s compound. So to be different and to know that you’re just from another planet…” He trails off, before resuming with an anecdote about meeting Carter some years ago at Feinstein’s in New York. She was singing Rita Hayworth numbers such as “Put the Blame on Mame,” and Jackson, who has several of her albums as well as one of the few VHS copies of her movie, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, was finally able to tell her how much she meant to him. “I told her everything and she was so lovely. And it’s so strange -- so not strange -- but so many people feel the exact same way.”

For Lapka, Jackson’s guileless quality and big-hearted enthusiasm is both an asset and a liability. “He goes into every situation believing in everyone,” he says. “That’s a wonderful quality, but it also leaves him exposed. If I could change anything about that I’d want him to self-protect more, but I don’t think he’d be the same person if he did.” Tall and muscular, with a keen, dry wit, Lapka loves to quote from books and TV shows (he describes his relationship to Jackson by paraphrasing a line from The Simpsons, in which Homer tells Marge, “Our differences are on the surface, but our sames go all the way down.”) and tends to stay in the background, volleying quips whenever they encounter annoying celebrity behavior.

For his part, Jackson looks to Lapka, who he met in Seattle -- “he was working at corporate Starbucks doing his science-nerd algorithm physics stuff” -- as an example of how to be in his own life -- resolute, confident, fearless. He tells a revealing anecdote about rehearsing for All Shook Up, his first major Broadway role. Harvey Weinstein was one of the producers, and on Jackson’s request recommended an acting coach to help him develop the character. “He immediately just broke down my façade -- all my bullshit -- and challenged me to own my own space,” recalls Jackson. The coach took him to Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, pointed down the busy sidewalk, and commanded him to walk right down the center, not bobbing or weaving as Jackson would ordinarily do. “They’ll move for you,” he told the hesitant actor. “It was very hard,” recalls Jackson. “People were like, ‘Asshole, I’m holding groceries here, what the fuck,’ but I did it. I learned to hold my own space.” He smiles. “That’s when things really started happening.”

To see a slide show of images featuring Cheyenne Jackson in OUT magazine, click here.

Catching Up With Maroon 5's Adam Levine & His Friendship with Jake Gyllenhaal...Nope! They're not Gay!

Last year, Maroon 5 escaped to Switzerland with legendary producer Mutt Lange in tow to record their new album, Hands All Over. OUT magazine caught up with the band’s pretty boy frontman Adam Levine to chat about their particular brand of pop music, Lady Gaga, and buddy Jake Gyllenhaal’s sexuality.

Out: Critics have likened the band’s sound to everyone from Huey Lewis and the News to Journey. How would you describe Maroon 5’s sound?

Adam Levine: We’ve been a band for so long. You know Maroon 5’s sound has always been changing because I think we’re not necessarily interested in fitting into a category. We love pop music. I grew up listening to rock 'n' roll music. My parents raised me on the Beatles and the Stones and folk music -- Simon and Garfunkel and Dylan and all this stuff. I was a teenager in the '90s so I got into the Nirvanas and the Pearl Jams and the Soundgardens and all these bands and rebelled against pop music and hated it. Then when I was 19 or 20, I started getting into Stevie Wonder and Al Green and Bill Withers and all this other stuff so I treat music the way I treat everything in life, which is there’s so much variety in music, it’s silly to belong to a specific club and try to sound a certain way. Hence, our sound has changed because we just like everything. It’s maybe a little poppier than when we started. It was more R&B in the beginning. I don’t know what we are. Journey is funny, though. That’s a weird one.

Out: I read your first record was heavily influenced by Stevie Wonder and on the second one you invoked the Police and Prince. Who were you channeling for Hands All Over?

Adam: Sometimes you wear your influences on your sleeve and you think Man, I want to be Sting right now, or I want to be Prince, or you want to be something and so you emulate it to a point where you can totally tell what you’re doing. And I’ve done that in the past, especially with Stevie Wonder on that first record, but it’s kind of better to try -- it’s almost like in the beginning you do that and then you figure out a way to meld what you do into something new and unique. First of all, we’re a band, which is really weird that we played R&B-infused music in the beginning. There wasn’t really anyone doing that. For this record, I had nothing on my mind that was specifically that. I didn’t want to be anyone other than myself on this record, so that came through. I feel like this record -- I mean, I said this about the second record, but I was wrong -- I think that this album is free of any hyper-emulization. And also, I was in Switzerland, so geographically I was really isolated from everything, so I was letting it all go, and I just wanted to see what happened.

Out: Earlier this year you said “Maroon 5 is the most Mutt Lange-friendly band out there.” How did you end up working with him and were you looking for more Shania Twain-style Mutt Lange or more Def Leppard-style Mutt Lange?

Adam: Mutt Lange is one of those guys who’s done everything. He’s produced AC/DC records, Def Leppard records, Shania Twain records, wrote songs you never would have imagined he had ever written -- he did a lot of stuff with Bryan Adams -- and his thing is that, like us, he’s neither here nor there. He doesn’t really care what something is or where it comes from. He cares much more about the quality of the music he’s making, and that’s how we felt too. We’ve never been genre snobs or anything like that, so it’s kind of the best possible idea for collaboration. Because when you think about his track record and our track record, it’s kind of similar in that no one really knows where to place us or put us. And he was really good at helping us figure out who we actually were and going with that and not being inhibited by anything, especially being as far from reality as we were. We were in Geneva for four months in like lala land, so I’m surprised we didn’t make a record that sounded like fucking Snow White. It was so idyllic.

Out: Now that you’re putting out a new album, does your wild success with the earlier albums make it easier, or are you intimidated by trying to achieve that level of success again?

Adam: I feel older for sure. It’s kind of weird. The band released our first record when we were all 22. That’s young. We started succeeding when we were 23, 24, and I’m 31 now. A) It’s crazy that we’ve been around this long and B) I start to feel -- not insecure or self-conscious -- but definitely start to feel slightly more disconnected from that youth-based, kind of pop culture. I’m figuring out how to deal with it because I think we still make really poppy music. You know, once you turn 30 you start tripping about that kind of shit too. I see it as a positive because I’m like, “Fuck everything. Fuck all you guys” -- not you guys -- but it’s like I’m just going to do my own thing now. I’m cool, and I have ownership of who I am and what I do, so what everyone else thinks doesn’t matter to me. And that’s a cool way of making music too, because I feel totally unself-conscious about it. But it’s weird, you’re competing with these kids, 19-, 20-year-old kids, where you’re like, “You guys don’t even know -- about anything. You’re kids!” I don’t even know where the music comes from. I was just talking to my manager outside -- I’m so disconnected. If you gave me the top 10 artists right now in the country, I’d be like, “Who are you?” I’m so dissociated from it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I see it as a good thing because then you have the potential to bring something new and unaffected by other things in pop culture. I think that’s great. I think that’s going to make us stand out and live forever in the universe.

Out: Since the last record came out, the musical landscape has changed so much. A name that comes up a lot in the Out studio is Lady Gaga, and I really think she’s changed the musical landscape in a lot of ways -- especially in America. But you’re saying that you guys really didn't take into account what's trendy or popular and just concentrated on doing what you do?

Adam: Gaga is the perfect example because people are definitely saying things like, “changed the face of music” and “avant-garde.” And I love what she does. I love the fact that she exists. It’s almost like, finally there’s a pop star who brings a little bit more weight to it. She’s weird. She’s a weird chick. She does weird shit. She dresses weird. Her music is slightly off. That’s awesome. I think that’s great for pop music because it’s been so safe up to this point, and I like that she’s nude all the time and weird and awesome and cool. Madonna was that way too. I know she gets that comparison a lot, but it’s true. She was pushing the envelope back in the day. She was doing the same thing that Gaga’s doing to a large extent. She has her own spin on it. That’s fantastic. I love subverting the new generation of pop music and all these really safe Disney kids. But no, I’m not going to try to sound like that because that would be weird. That would be even weirder than Lady Gaga herself if we just all of a sudden got really strange -- because we’re not, that’s just not who we are. But she’s great, and there are very few things these days that are truly innovative and forward-thinking or at least different. Goddamn, everything’s just so generic. I like things that shake shit up.

Out: So many of the articles I read while doing research on you mentioned how attractive you are. But some of the articles argued that your good looks might be doing the band a disservice…

Adam: Yeah.

Out: …because Maroon 5 might not be seen as credible musicians because of that. How do you feel about being cast as a sex symbol?

Adam: I don’t know. It’s weird. I once said in an article, I think, if we were overweight, middle-aged dudes, we ‘d be taken very seriously, and our music would be considered ironic and cool and we’d be hipsters. Same music, different look. And it’s probably true. Maybe it has hurt a little, but this is also assuming that I find myself attractive, which is funny, but the fact that I’ve been considered that is very flattering but also maybe somewhat detrimental to what I’m trying to do. But also really helpful, so it’s a double-edged sword. It’s great. It’s propelled me to a place that I enjoy, mostly, so I’m not mad at that. I’ve also been perceived as a womanizing whoremonger or whatever, some sort of weird dude – Lothario is a word I’ve heard a couple of times -- and that’s just weird. I’m young, successful. I’ve been having fun and hooking up with girls. It’s like, Leave me alone. What, do you not want me to do that? So I’m cool with all of it. Yeah, sometimes it sucks because I would like to be – we are taken seriously, that’s another thing. Sometimes I am hypersensitive to the fact that we’re not taken seriously, but I don’t realize, Well, wait a minute. We’ve won awards that are really prestigious and Grammys and all this stuff. What am I complaining about? I’ve got all that shit too. It’s kind of awesome. I’m really stoked, to be honest.

Out: You’ve also gotten a lot of attention for hanging out with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Adam: Will everyone stop thinking that dude is gay? Seriously guys. How immature is it of the media to perceive this guy -- it has to be because of Brokeback, right? I’ve known this dude forever. He’s one of my oldest friends, and it’s very weird that they have this -- it’s very immature and infantile the way they treat his whole situation. If him hanging out with his bros means he’s gay, it’s like further perpetuating that weird homophobia that exists in our culture, which is just stupid. So, yeah, he’s my buddy. I fuckin’ love the guy.

Out: Do you read your own press?

Adam: No. My press always gets regurgitated to me at some point and I’m like, Ugh, this is so silly. So, yeah, God bless ‘em.

Out: Lastly, Perez Hilton was talking about your comeback and the question he posed was, “In 2010, is Maroon 5 still relevant?”

Adam: I didn’t read it.

Out: How would you respond to that question?

Adam: Scoreboard. We’ll see. Who knows? Being relevant doesn’t have anything to do with anything other than quality and good music. And as long as I go out there and play good music and play for our constituency and our fan base, I don’t see us going anywhere. That’s another thing that’s really exciting, we’ve been doing this a long time and our first record came out almost a decade ago and we’re still here. We’re not trying to push the envelope, but we’re definitely interested in quality and making good records and continuing to do that as time goes on and let people say what they say, it doesn’t really matter. Like I said, scoreboard. Look and see. You always have that little fear in your mind and think, Shit, what if no one cares anymore? But I like to stay positive through all this shit. Because that’s the one crappy thing about all of this: unwanted attention. The only thing I ever want attention for is music. Nothing about my personal life, friends, or family, who I’m dating and all that shit -- that’s an unfortunate byproduct of what we do. But it’s very important to a lot of people. I wish it weren’t because things are a lot more important than that, guys, so start focusing on that a little bit.

Hands All Over is now in stores and available for download. For more info on Maroon 5, visit the band's official website.

Christina Aguilera Talks Estrogen & Exploration

Christina Aguilera vamps it up in this shot for OUT magazine’s June 2010 issue.

The 29-year-old singer, who’s also the Out cover girl this month, spoke about freeing herself creatively and exploring her sexuality. Check it:

On growing creatively since her first album, Christina Aguilera: “On that first album, I was creatively stifled. On Stripped I was like, I don’t give a f—.”

On the thought of being with a woman: “I don’t think I could ever really be with a woman because that’s a lot of…Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogen and I’m a lot to deal with when it’s that time of the month, so I can’t imagine it times two.”

For more from Christina, check out OUT.com.

Christina Aguilera Covers OUT Magazine

Christina Aguilera reclaims her fame on the June 2010 cover of Out Magazine.

“I get off on working with creative energy,” the 29-year-old singer recently told Billboard. “That’s when I’m most at home and feel happiest. And all these people brought about new sides of me. It was a big collaboration-fest, and it felt so good and rewarding in the end, because I was just so happy with the work and the new territories that I ventured out to.”

Christina’s second single will reportedly be “Woohoo.“

OUT Interview: Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson Reveals Crush on Evan Lysacek

Jesse Tyler Ferguson is on the cover of the new issue of OUT magazine.

The gifted out star plays one-half of a gay couple raising a child on the hit ABC comedy Modern Family.

Here are some portions of his interview with OUT:

Each week Ferguson feels the pressures of playing a gay character, and although he has always been out in his privates life, until recently he remained hesitant about opening up about his sexuality publicly. “I just didn’t feel like it was doing [The Class] character any service, so I lived my life the way I had been living,” Ferguson says. “I just wasn’t doing it in the pages of Out or The New York Times. But with this show, it was never a question about quote unquote staying in the closet—which I’ve never been in.”.”

Although he has never been “in” in his personal life, Ferguson knows the responsibility he, and the show, has in introducing a gay family to Middle America. “We’re introducing this gay couple in a very safe way, and maybe that’s why right off the bat we’re not showing full-on make-out scenes, and we’re not showing them in bed together [initially]. But a lot of the people who are a little leery of ‘that gay couple,’ especially a gay couple raising a baby, are seeing this very normal grounding, loving pair. So we’re sneaking into so many Middle American living rooms, maybe more than any gay couple ever has before.”

Off the screen Ferguson has obsessions of his own, includin

g Ellen DeGeneres and American Idol, and the Winter Olympics catalyzed a not-so-secret crush on ice skater Evan Lysacek. Ferguson declares, “I’m not hiding it. I hear he lives in L.A. too, so it’s just a matter of time before we meet. Although I don’t know if he’s gay.… He’s a brilliant skater, and he’s also really handsome, and he seems like a really sweet guy, so I swoon when I see him.… I need to get out of the 20-year-old age bracket. Like, I have crushes on all of the Jonas Brothers. I assume that’s OK?"

You can read the entire story on the new OUT magazine available at newstands or by clicking here.

Outspoken Janice Dickinson’s Weighs in on Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga in New OUT Interview

Supermodel, reality TV star, owner of her own modeling agency, Janice Dickinson has crammed a lot of living into her 50-odd years. Her newest ventures — including a one-woman show, a new reality series, and a foray into the music industry — prove that there’s little she won’t try, regardless of how unsuited for the challenge she might seem to be. And it’s that unsinkable drive that we probably love most about her — that and her dirty, straight shooting, gossiping mouth.

http://www.out.com/ caught up with Janice in New York during a day just after she had descended upon the Warren Tricomi Salon in the Plaza Hotel with her daughter, Savannah (Savvy), for a day of pampering and $10,000 worth of Great Lengths hair extensions.

Here are a few excerpts:

On Ricky Martin coming out: “We’ve always known Ricky was gay. Come on! [Sings] Living La Vida Lie! Poor thing. I want everyone out there in history to please, if you’re gay, please come out. It feels so good. So I applaud you Ricky. We applaud Ricky Martin finally. Being involved with Out magazine, being able to say, [lowers voice conspiratorially] OK, OK, you all read my book and you know I’ve had a threesome — you know I’ve had scenes with women. It’s the most freeing thing you could ever do in your life — coming out. Come out, come out wherever you are. I’m begging any male model or female model in the fashion industry or in the dental industry or any industry — come out. It feels so good. Bravo Ricky Martin!”

On Lady Gaga: “Lady Gaga has to refer to the art world as reference, because honey she ain’t no beauty to look at, but, she becomes beautiful in the eyes of the beholder — the way her performance transcends her persona. Her music to me — I mean come on — “Paparazzi” and all these kitschy little songs, they’re good, really good. To see her live in Vegas, at the Mirage — I walked out. I’m sorry. I watched her at the piano and I had to go out and have a… [once again lowers her voice] smoke. We walked out because I was thinking, Stop talking about “Your sex, I want your sex.” I don’t give a fuck about her I wanting “your sex.” But you know, I get where she’s coming from, and it’s phenomenal, along with the perception that her gays put together her performance art for her. But it’s all who you surround yourself with — the team. Example: me — Janice Dickinson — I wouldn’t be shit if it weren’t for my gays. I wouldn’t be even sitting here if it weren’t for late great Way Bandy, for the late great Ara Gallant, for the late great Richard Avedon, for the late great every single queen from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s that made me La Janice. Match that Gaga! Aight?”

You can read the entire interview at OUT Magazine.

The Gayncients...All of the Gladiators!

Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Gerard Butler, Andy Whitfield, the list goes on: all muscular fellows who got down and dirty in leather thongs and strappy sandals. With the Clash of the Titans remake set to launch Sam Worthington onto the big screen in yet more oiled-up action, and Starz’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand ramping it up with some gay thrills (and quite a bit of full frontal male nudity), we ask just how gay were the real ancients? The answer is -- a whole lot more than the movies show.

Spartacus

In contrast to most of the stories that follow, the ’60s movie is pretty gay, the TV series is very gay, but the real-life story wasn’t really gay at all. Spartacus was one of a group of slaves who fought their way out of a gladiator school in Italy in 73 B.C. He proved smart and scored victories over every Roman army sent after him, and his own ragtag army grew to number tens of thousands. Finally, the might of Rome prevailed and Spartacus was defeated, his followers killed or crucified. His body was never found. There are no reports of gayness. On to Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 movie, Spartacus, with Kirk Douglas in the title role, but the much more interesting subplot featuring the very camp Crassus (Laurence Olivier) lusting after a very young, pretty slave boy Antoninus (Tony Curtis) and making his play in the baths. That scene was not restored until the movie’s re-release in 1991. Now we have the TV show, which is really 300 meets Gladiator meets The Matrix with some man-on-man action. No, really -- and this time not just innuendo. It isn’t a major plotline, but there is a serious relationship there, with a muscled hunk and a … whatever twinks were called in those days. Twancients?

The Sacred Band of Thebes

One hundred-fifty homo couples, idolized by society, heroes to all, sworn to fight to the death to protect their love and homeland. Perfect. And for 40 years (from 378 B.C.) they did just that for the Greek city-state of Thebes. They were instrumental in defeating the Spartans (mild irony here, given those scantily clad brutes’ fondness for pederasty), and then (major irony this time) were wiped out by none other than Alexander (soon to be “the Great” and very likely “the Gay”) and his dad, Philip of Macedon, in 338 B.C. The Band were the only ones not to run away and refused surrender. Philip, seeing the bodies, is said by Plutarch to have stated: “Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.”

By chance, that very battle is re-created in the 1956 Richard Burton film Alexander the Great, though sadly it makes no mention of the Band at all and is in fact completely lame-looking other than Burton, who’s always worth a look.

Alexander the Great

Was he or wasn’t he? Gay, that is -- clearly he was great, having conquered one of the largest empires in history by the time of his death at 32 (in 232 B.C.). But despite his two marriages and his harem (a Persian affectation he favored though apparently used “sparingly”) and the arguments between biographers and historians, most agree his greatest relationship was with Hephaestion, his bodyguard, general, and companion. Hephaestion’s death plunged Alexander into a deep depression, and he died just eight months later. So was he gay? Maybe not, but the boy was very, very bi. Colin Farrell, in the movie Alexander, went for a pretty queer blond hairdo, but that’s as gay as the film got -- which is probably why the movie bombed.

And for purists, see Richard Burton in the 1956 movie Alexander, under our previous the Sacred Band of Thebes entry.

The Spartans

Bullies, brutes, preening peacocks, and big fans of oiling up and doing each other’s hair before a battle. The Spartans were all that and more and for a long time, given how much they really annoyed pretty much everyone they met (Sparta was a major power from 650 B.C. until around 360 B.C.). A brief summation of Spartan society: two kings, a small council of old men (the Gerousia), a small number of citizens, and a huge number of slaves (helots) to bully, humiliate, abuse, and kill. The male citizens were full-time soldiers and enjoyed pederasty, where an older man took a younger man under his wing. Some historians say this was chaste, some say chaste and yet erotic, some say get a grip, of course it was sexual. Also, when a young soldier came of age, his pre-chosen wife had her head shaved and was wrapped in a woolen military cloak and made to lie in a darkened room for him. Pretty conclusive, no? The movie 300 managed to simultaneously be really gay and pretty homophobic, what with the Athenians dismissed as “boy lovers” and that huge Persian drag god-king. Still, if it’s oiled six-packs and leather thongs you’re after, look no further. And don’t think of Gerard Butler as he is now, captured recently post-swim by a paparrazi, in all his bloated glory. Think of him always with a stomach like a carton of eggs, shouting “THUS. US. SPARTA!” in a Glaswegian accent.

Clash of the Titans

This is Greek god territory, and not many people would still claim they were real, so it’s fair game for reinvention in the movies. And as a genre, Greco-Roman mythology has no shortage of same-sex relationships -- Hercules perhaps the best-known and reputed to be the lover of many, many women and not a few boys.

As for the movies, the original Clash of the Titans sucked and not in a good way. The remake though, well: Sam Worthington in a tiny leather kilt and shaved head, plus a band of brawny companions in red cloaks and not much else. Liam Neeson too, though he’s gotten old and keeps his clothes on, thankfully. Can there be such a thing as too many dirty sweaty Greeks with great bods? Don’t be silly.

The Trojans

You know you’re manly when a brand of condoms is named after you, right?

So if we pretend we believe the siege of Troy really happened the way the legends tell us (Helen, face that launched a thousand ships; wooden horse; Achilles and his heel; etc.) then we’re mining a historically queer vein here. Achilles himself and Patroclus were very close, though no one specifically says they were bedding down together, but in context, pederasty seems highly likely. Achilles’ homo tendencies are again to the fore when the Trojan prince Troilus and his sister Polyxena are captured and Achilles takes a fancy to the lad. In different versions of the tale, Troilus rejects Achilles and is decapitated (you’d think twice before rejecting Achilles, clearly) or they get it on and Troilus is killed in an overenthusiastic clinch with Achilles. If only to show how un-gay the 2004 movie Troy, is in comparison to the legend: We have Brad in sandals and a tiny skirt with lots of muscles but the movie stresses that the pair are cousins (in fact, they’re first cousins once removed), and this is stressed with much manly sporting around, so we know there couldn’t be anything dodgy going on.

The Roman Emperors

Forget Caligula and Nero and their excesses: Those dudes would have humped a doorknob. The real, honest-to-goodness gay emperor also one of the best emperors: Hadrian (emperor from 117 A.D. until 138 A.D.), who was one of the so-called “five good emperors.” He strengthened the empire, wrote poetry in Latin and Greek, and made the beard fashionable (his may well have been grown to hide a warty face, but never mind). He also built libraries, bathhouses (of course) and theaters. Is any more proof needed? Well, here it is, in the handsome shape of Antinous, a Greek boy who Hadrian met when the youth was 13 or 14. When the boy mysteriously drowned six years later, the grief-stricken emperor founded a city in his honor and then had him deified.

But back to Caligula for a second, and high praise for a classic moment in TV history, courtesy of the Brits’ cheap and cheerful 1970s TV series I Claudius. There’s no suggestion Claudius was a homo, but check out this wonderful scene where the young Caligula (John Hurt at his creepiest) presents his Uncle Tiberius with ancient gay porn … and a special appearance by Patrick Stewart (with hair) as Praetorian Guard commander Sejanus.

Gladiator

We love an excuse to show Russell Crowe at his sweaty best, and here it is. He fights Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in the arena at the end of the movie, you may recall. Commodus’ character is based on the real-life emperor of the same name (who ruled 180 A.D. to 192 A.D.). The real Commodus was a thug who loved a fight and used to battle men and animals in the arena, often naked in his preferred guise of the famously bi-curious Hercules.

Article from: Out Magazine

Ewan McGregor Talks to Out Magazine About His Gay Roles: “I Like Kissing Boys on Screen”

With his film I Love You Phillip Morris finally coming out next month, Ewan McGregor is on the cover of Out Magazine and gives a really juicy interview about playing gay (opposite Jim Carrey) in this and other films.

Here is the complete Out Magazine article:

Sydney, Ewan McGregor’s sand-colored poodle mutt, is pooping on a well-kempt lawn in Los Angeles. He eyes the horizon, birds chirp, and McGregor readies the bag. Suddenly, a black Kerry terrier appears, held by a peroxide septuagenarian wearing a too-loose vintage Brentwood marathon T-shirt and too-tight spandex shorts. Sydney, torn by two competing passions, seems unable to decide whether to lunge immediately or finish his business. His eyes dart back and forth. Then, in a beige flash, Sydney makes up his mind, leaving the poop half in and half out. Moments later, sheepishly, tenderly, McGregor tidies Sydney up with a napkin cadged from Le Pain Quotidien. “Ah,” he murmurs quietly, “my wee man, Syd.” The tone of the day is set.

An hour later, the three of us are sitting on a picnic bench atop Inspiration Point at the summit of Will Rogers Park in Pacific Palisades. Well, two of us are sitting. McGregor’s lying on the bench, face up, bum westerly, legs spread in the air, illustrating an early professional mishap of onstage nudity. The incident in question involved one inopportunely placed vase full of water, two spills (the vase’s and, shortly thereafter, his), a racy Joe Orton farce, and a front row of British pensioners, alarmed and titillated by the fast-approaching naked rear end of the then 21-year-old Scot. “So I’m sliding toward the front row of the audience like this,” he says, “butt naked, and thinking, What of the front row? They just got my bumhole coming straight at them.” For those unlucky enough not to have been there, McGregor hasn’t been shy since.

There are two things my mother knows about Ewan McGregor: He wrote Atonement, and he loves dropping his trousers. One out of two ain’t bad. “I always try not to limit myself in all respects,” explains McGregor in a Scots brogue softened by years in London and, more recently, in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Eve, and three daughters. “Sexuality is just one of them. I could understand saying ‘I would never do gratuitous nudity.’ Wait. No. I probably would. I’d probably be quite happy to.” In fact, as my mother correctly remembers, he has. Since his first full-frontal exposure -- during a rehearsal for a play about the Holocaust at Guildhall School of Music and Drama -- hardly a year has gone by without McGregor’s privates being committed to celluloid. “I remember getting a kind of rush out of that first time, a slight feeling of power about it, you know?” recalls McGregor. His butt, since its magnificent sliding debut in What the Butler Saw, has been seen by millions and his penis has appeared on-screen so often -- in Trainspotting, in The Pillow Book, in Velvet Goldmine -- it deserves its own Oscar nod.

The far-flung legend of McGregor’s penis, casting its long shadow over the Hollywood Hills -- though accurate -- distracts from a quietly courageous and wildly varied acting career. He’s not just some one-trick cock-flashing pony. That the long-delayed and finally upon us I Love You Phillip Morris -- a very good, very, very gay film slated for release in March -- isn’t an aberration but one of McGregor’s more mainstream films testifies to his unusual oeuvre. Like many of McGregor’s choices, I Love You Phillip Morris is an uneasy film. Based on a true story (and a 2003 book by Steve McVicker) the movie follows Steven Russell, played by Jim Carrey, a charming con man and an incorrigible escape artist. In 1995, during a stint in the Harris County Jail in Houston, Russell meets Phillip Morris -- played by McGregor as a blond Southern belle of a man -- in the jail’s library. Morris was reaching for a copy of The Federal Reporter on a high shelf. Their eyes met, sparks arced, Russell came on hard, and Morris, happy as a cat, purred and arched into the hand that pet him.

Had what follows not been exhaustively cataloged by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, it could easily be dismissed as fantastic prison pulp: Russell goes to prison (Theft, Case No. 618544), Russell and Morris fall in love. Russell escapes prison (Escape, Case No. 727973), finds Morris, the two live lavishly. Russell goes to prison (Aggravated Theft, Case No. 723526). Russell escapes prison, finds Morris, the two live lavishly. Russell goes to prison, escapes prison, finds Morris, the two live lavishly until Russell gets caught and goes to prison for good (Escape, Case No. 9,856-C). Russell -- Inmate No. 00760259 -- has a maximum sentence that would keep him imprisoned until July 12, 2140 -- 47,595 days after the film opens.

Despite the fact that it stars perhaps the most bankable star in Hollywood -- the worldwide gross of Carrey’s movies is more than $4 billion dollars -- and, opposite him, its most talented, I Love You Phillip Morris, has languished undistributed domestically for more than a year, even after a strong showing at its Sundance debut in 2009. “At Sundance everyone assumed it would be snapped up,” says McGregor, “but it wasn’t.” Perhaps one reason is that the central character is an unlovable (or uneasily loved) sociopathic scammer. But a more likely reason is that in cells, on bunks, on boats, before sunsets, after sunsets, on divans, over ottomans, without panning away or dissolving to white, the two men kiss, fondle, fuck, blow, suck, hold hands, dance, murmur, and eye. In short, they act like lovers do, and, because both Morris and Russell are openly gay men and their gayness seems not to trouble them in the slightest, this is a dicey commercial proposition. “There was talk,” says McGregor, “that Disney fended off the release until after A Christmas Carol came out. They didn’t want kids thinking [Carrey’s] Ebenezer Scrooge was a bender.”

When it appears on American screens, I Love You Phillip Morris will be, to some extent, down-gayed. (Or perhaps it’s ungayed, degayed, or less-gayed.) As part of a bid to find U.S. distribution, the film has been recut, leaving out some of the gayest moments. After a rather touching episode of Florida Key fellatio, for example, Morris spits over the side of the boat into the Atlantic Ocean. “There were two alternatives,” explains McGregor. “There was the spit, and there was a really nice slow swallow, where I look at him and just do a loud swallow. I really like that one, but I guess they went for the more obvious spit over the side.”

Nevertheless, I Love You Phillip Morris is loudly and insistently gay. Carrey, as Russell, sees dicks in everything: clouds, baguettes, himself. At one point, he yells, Scrooge-like, “I’m gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.” But Carrey playing gay is 80% Jim Carrey and 20% the character. In McGregor’s slightly coquettish Morris, however, there are only trace elements of Ewan McGregor. In his place, there’s a sly character, part wolf, part sheep, and wholly formed.

“I’m very keen that it’s a gay movie,” McGregor insists. “There was quite a lot of talk at Sundance that ‘Well, it’s not a gay movie. It’s a film about guys who happen to be gay.’ And I was thinking, it’s nothing but a gay movie. It’s about a gay couple, about a man’s sexuality, and he comes out. It’s not the point of the film, but let’s not pretend it’s not a gay film.”

Though I Love You Phillip Morris may be some sort of Rubicon for Carrey, McGregor has kissed boys his entire career. “The first bisexual character I played was in [1996’s] The Pillow Book. There’s tons of sex in that film. We didn’t even bother putting clothes on between scenes. I had quite a full-on sex scene with a 75-year-old Japanese guy,” he recalls. “We’re kissing, and I remember going, He’s got a mustache and that’s kind of weird. Oh! That’s definitely a scrotum. That’s odd.”

Though his silver daddy moment was somewhat lost in the Trainspotting scrum, McGregor’s next movie, Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine, wherein he plays a barely disguised Iggy Pop to Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s epicene “David Bowie,” brought his propensity, willingness, and talent for kissing men to a wider audience and, in so doing, provided the raw footage for a fantasy reel of dreamy leading men locking lips. In fact, upon reflection, theirs might be about the most satisfying gay kiss ever committed to film. It’s got all you need: gold lamé, an Oscar Wilde quote (“The curve of your lips rewrite history”), the deceptive vulnerability of McGregor with his wide grin, the cruel-seeming beauty of Meyers. Oh, and eye shadow -- dark, glam pools of it. “I remember when I kissed Johnny,” says McGregor. “It was just a rush at the end of the day. It was just an electrical moment, because you look around and some of the British electrician guys -- who are all mainly closeted homosexuals, I think -- were sitting around going ‘Fuck, no.’ But I like kissing boys on screen. As a straight guy, it’s quite an interesting proposition. Anything on a film set that takes you by surprise like that, that gets your blood up, is good.”

Judging from his career, lots of things seem to get McGregor’s blood up. The actor is less guided by the usual Hollywood obsession -- the bottom line -- than by a healthy full-blooded sense of adventure. (In fact, as of 2008, he’s the official face of Adventure, a cologne by Davidoff.) Twice, McGregor has circumnavigated the globe on a motorcycle with his friend Charley Boorman, the first time latitudinally, the second time longitudinally. (The trips formed the basis of two television shows, Long Way Round and Long Way Down.) His roles are those of an inquisitive mind, hungry to feel more and also feel different, not necessarily those of an acquisitive one. And thus, his career is less a direct path to the A-list than a meandering peregrination, beset by low-grossing spurs and indie digressions. But what Hollywood might see as dead ends, McGregor considers his best work. “When it gets to the top end, they’re really reluctant to step out of any box, which is why the movies become very bland,” he confesses. “When people come up to talk about a movie like Velvet Goldmine, it’s much more interesting than talking about, for instance, Angels & Demons.”

So, though McGregor fought in the Battle of Naboo, he’s also jerked off as James Joyce (in Star Wars episodes 1 through 3 and Nora, respectively). He’s been a song and dance man in the strange Down With Love and the stellar Moulin Rouge and an action figure in Black Hawk Down. But in lesser known movies like Young Adam, Stay, The Pillow Book, Phillip Morris, and in the forthcoming movie Beginners, by indie auteur Mike Mills, McGregor gives breath and depth to characters rarely written and even more rarely lifted from the page into a body. “I’m always interested in playing different people, in different situations,” he says, sitting bolt upright, suddenly serious and eyeing the Pacific Ocean stretching below us. “It doesn’t matter to me whether someone is in love with a man or a woman. I find the idea of love and romance interesting. I’m a sucker for it. I like playing someone who’s falling in love because I like the sensation of it.” He pauses to give Syd an affectionate pat. “People do extraordinary things when they’re falling in love.” n

I Love You Phillip Morris opens on April 23rd.

Adam Lambert:'People are Freaked Out by Male Sexuality'

American Idol star Adam Lambert has said that people find his expressions of his sexuality offensive because he is gay.

The singer was talking to Out Magazine, which has just named him one of its top 100 gays. He appears on the cover with comedian Wanda Sykes, out gay soldier Lt Dan Choi, singer Cyndi Lauper and film director Rob Marshall.

He said: "To some people, me being sexual is really offensive because I’m gay. They’re like, he’s being really gay. And I’m like, actually, no, because there’s no other guys up here. I’m just being sexual.

"And male sexuality is frightening to America. Female sexuality – it might not be the best example of it, but it’s all over the place. Overt female sexuality might be degrading. It might not be the most feminist type of sexuality, unless you look at it like the woman’s in control, so she’s got the power.

"Sexuality is just – people are so freaked out by it. The double standard is that a woman can get away with it but a man hasn’t been able to yet."

Lambert also discussed his relationship with interior designer Drake LaBry. The pair were reported to have split earlier this month.

He said: "Sometimes it’s hard to, like, be a boyfriend for somebody, because you don’t know what that means. What does that mean? Especially if you haven’t been in many relationships.

"And being in the gay community, we don’t grow up with any role models for that. We don’t know what we’re supposed to be. And I think that’s funny because there’s so much – again, it’s something that’s being evolved out of, but in the gay community there’s so much promiscuity.

"It’s socially accepted in the gay community to be promiscuous. . . And I’m not judging that, but I don’t think that’s for me. I don’t think it’s emotionally healthy."

OUT Magazine Introduces the Class of 2009

In it’s 16th annual Out 100 issue, Out magazine anoints Adam Lambert breakout star after the musician catapulted from Wicked chorus boy to American Idol cover boy earlier this year.

In an extended online interview, the star candidly discusses his sexuality, his newfound fame, and why he finds it hard to sustain a relationship: “Being in the gay community, we don’t grow up with any role models for that. We don’t know what we’re supposed to be.”

This year’s portfolio of 100 gay men, lesbians and transgender people, plus ally Cyndi Lauper, was shot entirely by award-winning photographer Jason Bell, and is the largest annual magazine portfolio in the world. Bell’s portraits draw inspiration from the classroom and the schoolyard as the unifying theme for this year’s portfolio. Actor Neil Patrick Harris smokes in the bleachers, director Pedro Almodovar sports a hickey, Top Gun icon Kelly McGillis stares moodily from a school bus, and playwright Tony Kushner coyly aims a slingshot at an unsuspecting target.

Here’s what Adam Lambert had to share with Out…

On Sexuality: “To some people, me being sexual is really offensive because I’m gay. They’re like, ‘He’s being really gay.’ And I’m like, actually, ‘No, I’m just being sexual.’ Male sexuality is frightening to America [but] female sexuality is all over the place.”

On Fame: “Fame doesn’t freak me out, and I can handle it. But sometimes out in public there are people that just are so rude.

“Like, people are really cool about it and they’ll come up to you and they’re just like, “Oh hey man, I really liked you.” It’s brief, it’s sweet, it’s genuine. But some people freak out. And I’m like, why are you freaking out? I don’t get that mentality. I’ve never felt like that about a celebrity before — except maybe Madonna.

“When I met Madonna my heart was racing. That’s my one experience being star-struck. And I told her, ‘I’m freaking out.’ And she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because you’re f—ing Madonna.’”

Featured among the other major honorees:

Wanda Sykes: Entertainer of the Year
The comedian emceed Barack Obama’s first White House Correspondent’s dinner earlier this year, and landed her own nighttime talk show on Fox that premiered this month.

Cyndi Lauper: Ally of the Year
No pop diva has flexed her muscles for gay equality as much as Cyndi Lauper. Among her most laudable achievement is the True Colors Residence in Harlem—the first permanent supportive housing facility for LGBT youth in New York State. “Kids are coming out in greater numbers as they see themselves accepted and represented on TV and in movies,” says Lauper. “But they’re still being kicked out of their homes or running away and living on the streets. We need to make sure we’re taking care of them.”

Rob Marshall: Artist of the Year
The six-time Tony-nominated choreographer and director follows up his Oscar-winning Chicago with another movie musical, Nine, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, and Sophia Loren, among others.

Dan Choi: Newsmaker of the Year
After making waves in March when he appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show as a spokesperson for Knights Out, a group for gay West Point students and alumni, Choi was notified that he’d be investigated for breaching Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. In spite of a petition in his support, with some 162,000 signatures, Choi was discharged, and has since taken a leading role in the fight to end DADT.

Christopher Bailey: Stylemaker of the Year
The 38-year-old Creative Director of Burberry who draws inspiration from the such sources as cult gay British director Derek Jarman and artist David Hockney, has been responsible for turning the label into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse.

The latest edition of OUT goes on sale on November 24th. For the complete Out 100 go to www.out.com/Out100.