Long before “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Godford’s Park” made him a major big screen presence, Ryan Phillippe’s “One Life to Live” character broke ground on television. Phillippe portrayed Billy Douglas between 1992-93, the first gay teenager depicted on daytime TV.
In an interview with People, the “Cruel Intentions” star said that, among the large volume of fan mail he received during his time on the series, many came from parents writing that the character “gave [them] a way to connect with [their] LGBTQ child.” Kids, meanwhile, wrote, “I’ve never seen someone represent me in any entertainment before in my life.”
“As that job progressed, I realized how important it was to some people,” Phillippe said. “And I was only 17 years old, so you don’t really have a sense of that. It was such a different time, but I very much matured through having had that experience and seeing the impact that it had for others.”
In the early ‘90s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, gay roles were only beginning to break into the mainstream. Phillippe’s character predated Tom Hanks’ Oscar-winning performance in “Philadelphia,” radical comedies like “The Birdcage,” and Ellen’s earth-shattering coming out episode on her self-titled sitcom. Phillippe said that the storyline made him afraid, being that it was such a different time.
“I think there were some fears associated with the point in time that we were at and it being before so many walls and ceilings have been broken in that regard,” Phillippe recalled. “But I know that any fears that anyone had about me doing it immediately went away once I saw the reaction that it got from the people who viewed it.”
Phillippe previously discussed on the impact of his role in a 2010 interview with The Advocate.
“One kid said he’d considered suicide before seeing a character like him being accepted,” Phillippe said. “I also heard from a father, a mechanic, who hadn’t spoken to his son since he came out. When our show came on in his shop, it gave him some insight and understanding as to who his son was, so it opened up communication between them.”
Phillippe currently stars in the Amazon Prime series “Motorheads.” Watch the trailer below:
