Kyle Chandler talks about his "Big Gay Following"

I first became smitten with Kyle Chandler when he starred in the show "Early Edition" which a cute guy got me hooked on many years ago. Since then, he's kept busy and was nominated for an Emmy for a guest stint on "Grey's Anatomy." Now he's the high school football coach on NBC's "Friday Night Lights" and The Advocate has selected him for its "Big Gay Following."

Here are some excerpts:

Are you surprised to find out that you have a big gay following?
Well, I hadn’t thought about it, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I didn’t do anything to y’all! [Laughs] Actually, I told a friend of mine that I was doing this interview, and he said, “What gay people follow you?”

We tend to follow handsome men. Do you work hard to look good?
Not as hard as I should. I’m 42 now, and I find myself slowing down a little bit. Doing the show and flying back and forth from Austin to Los Angeles takes it out of you. And I’ve got a wife and a couple kids, so I have to deal out all my attention and time there. When the show shuts down, that’s when you get to reinvent yourself, recuperate, get back in shape, and get ready to do it all over again.

Did you know any gay people growing up?
The first friends I had that were openly gay had to be in college. My second year of college, a good friend and I were walking around late at night, and we bummed a cigarette from some guys up across the street from the Waffle House at Five Points in Athens, Ga. We started talking, laughing, jabbing back in forth -- just one of those encounters at 3 o’ clock in the morning with strangers. By the time we’d finished, we’d probably smoked about 10 cigarettes together. I found out they were in the theater department, and one guy, Tyre Patterson—who ended up being a dear friend of mine for many years -- said, “Hey, you oughta go audition for this play down at the Cellar Theatre.” I did, and it was that audition that got me the lead as one of the brothers in The Comedy of Errors, and it was the applause when we did that that kept me in the theater. But it was also all the crazy, weird, bizarre people. I don’t consider myself to be normal, but actors are fun, strange, gypsy people, and I fit right in completely. That’s how I got to meet the gay culture to begin with. But it was never an issue -- at the University of Georgia, at least. It was a different lifestyle, for sure, but good people all around. Of course, Tyre and the other fellas that were there that first day, and so many others of them, they’re not alive anymore.