Oscar Winner and Broadway legend Joel Grey Cabaret after keeping his sexuality under wraps for years opens up to the world as a gay man.
Joel Grey, who's been married for 24 years and has two kids with wife steps out of the closet to reveal his sexualty to the world. He tells Peoplemagazine, "I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm gay!" While it's not a secret to his friends and family, the entertainers never spoken about it publicly before.
He was always happy with wife Jo Wilder in those 24 years. He fathered two children, Jennifer Grey and James. It took him time to embrace the other side of him. It was different for a man of his generation. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio where he remembers hearing grown ups including his mother, talk badly about gay men. They would even use the term, "fairy". Men were dragged off to jail or worse for being who they were. At about the same time, he remembers that while having feelings for girls, he also realized he had the same feelings for boys.
Jennifer Grey speaks out about her feelings on her dads coming out. "I feel very happy for my dad that he has come to a point in his life where he feels safe and comfortable enough to declare himself in a public way as a gay man," Jennifer said. "Mostly because the more people are free to own their true nature and can hopefully come closer to love and accept themselves as they really are, no matter what age, no matter how long it takes, to finally be free of the lies or half truths, it is freedom."
Joel Grey has worked on Cabaret, George M! and in later roles on Private Practice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer>. He has become an accomplished photographer and penned a memoir that will be released later this year.
image credit: Walter Mcbride/INFphoto.com