Growing up, my ideals were Barbra Streisand, Cher, and my mom.
I also have this incredible love for women.
I spent much of my life hiding.
I think the responsibility lies with the fashion world as a collective. We have to demand more variety.
I'm going to insult a whole industry here, but it seems like TV is for people who can't do film. I'm not talking about actresses; I'm talking about lighting people. Lighting on TV is just so... it's sinful, it really is.
I'm very passionate about what I do.
There are two types of people in the world: people who are passionate about things, and people who've had their passion punched, beaten, or whatever out of them.
When I was growing up, the men in my life were abusive; women were the ones I ran to for comfort.
Trying to conceal the fact that I was a gay, effeminate, hyperactive, adopted child with a serious lisp in southern Louisiana would have been like trying to hide Dolly Parton in a string bikini!
I made a crash landing here on Earth on February 14, 1962, in the Shreveport Catholic Charities Home for un-wed mothers. The infamous Bonnie and Clyde lost their lives just miles from where I was born. Like outlaws ourselves, my birth mother and I were on the run from the day she found out I was part of her.
I was a regular little boy who also enjoyed things that girls did.
I didn't know what gay was. There was no such thing when I was growing up. I knew I had crushes on boys, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with that until I started to hear about it from the other kids in school.
Fights with my father were really quite brutal. I would not live his vision. I would not become who he wanted me to be. Everything I did was criticized. I would spend three months drawing something and show him, and he would look up from his paper and just look back down. I got no approval from him for anything I did that was creative.
