Then came a profile of openly gay actor Craig Chester in the January 1995 issue of Genre, a gay lifestyle magazine.
For a young actor who was the first choice of producers to star in an upcoming big-budget James Dean biopic, it was a moment of unprecedented candor. The star fired the first round when he declared last year in Interview magazine that he was uncertain about his own sexual identity. Where once the issue of outing celebrities sharply divided the gay and lesbian community, there has been a growing consensus that the reluctance of the mainstream press to discuss such 'personal' issues is hypocritical, since editors regularly disclose very sensitive private details about public figures. Whether Oscar-nominated actor Leonardo DiCaprio chooses to identify himself as 'gay' is entirely his business.
