That time Harry Hamlin played a gay man in 1982 and it almost destroyed his career
Harry Hamlin has opened up about starring in the groundbreaking gay romance Making Love, and how the film almost destroyed his career.Hamlin spoke to People as part of the 40th anniversary of the film, which debuted in 1982.
It followed a Los Angeles writer, Bart (Hamlin), who falls for a closeted man named Zack (Michael Ontkean), who is married to a powerful TV executive named Claire (Kate Jackson).The film hailed from romance master Arthur Hiller (Love Story), and gay writers Barry Sandler and A.
Scott Berg. Berg and Sandler partially based the script on their own relationship.Looking back, Hamlin recalls the painful reception to the movie and the dire effect it had on his career.“I was told by a lot of people, you can’t do that movie,” he said. “I think it had been offered to pretty much everybody in town and everyone had turned it down because they thought it might be damaging to their careers.”“I didn’t see it that way.
I was looking for something serious and something meaningful, rather than doing a movie about vampire bats invading a small town in the Midwest, which is the type of fare I was being offered at the time.”Hamlin said it was his agent who really encouraged him to take the risk.“He said I was somewhat Teflon because I was out in the press having had a son with Ursula Andress,” he explained, referring to the couple’s son, Dmitri, who is now 41. “And he said, ‘Everyone knows you’re straight so you’re going to be okay.’ But I didn’t really pay much attention to any of that noise.
