Happy 40th Birthday, Robert Gant...

Best wishes to an actor who is out and proud - and one of the hoittest 40 year olds in town!

Here is part of an interview I did earlier this year with Robert Gant:

For years, Gant was cast as "the boyfriend" on such shows as "Caroline in the City" and "Friends" and had a recurring role on the cult favorite "Popular" as the young high school principal who all the female students were in love with. He had no trouble being convincing in these straight roles then decided to take on the part of a gay college professor in the groundbreaking Showtime series "Queer as Folk."

Early on in the show's five-year run, Gant decided to come out publicly. several years before such young stars as T.R. Knight, Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass and Luke Macfarlane followed suit.

"We're starting to cross the frontier in lots of different ways with Neil Patrick Harris' (womanizing) character on 'How I Met Your Mother,' so we're able to go there comedically," Robert said. "We are moving toward it. It's exciting to see Neil play that kind of a role. I see that as part of the frontier happening.

"I've been crossing many of my own frontiers in my life, now I'm encountering what I believe to be the last real frontier in Hollywood which is what it means of an openly gay leading man type actor playing a romantic straight role."