Actor Ryan Phillippe has reflected on his breakout role playing a gay teenager in the soap opera One Life to Live.
Phillippe was just seventeen when he was cast as Billy Douglas, the character was the first gay teenager to be featured on daytime television. Philippe stayed with the show from 1993 until the following year.
Reflecting back on the role more than three decades later the actor has described it as a “really profound experience” in a new interview with People magazine.
“I was so young that there were elements of me that were afraid because it was such a different time,” Phillppe said, sharing that many people had discouraged him from taking on the role.
“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 said. “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.”
The inclusion of a gay teenager was highly praised and Phillippe got a lot of fans, and it wasn’t long before his movie career took off.
After leaving New York where the soap opera was filmed, he headed to Los Angeles and began appearing in small parts in TV shows including Matlock and Due South. Soon he had small parts in films including Crimson Tide and White Squall.
His big screen breakthrough came with the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer. Soon he was getting a lot more gay fans with his starring roles in 54 and Cruel Intentions. More serious roles came in Gosford Park, Igby Goes Down, and Crash.
He returned to the world of television in 2011 when he delivered an acclaimed performance in the fifth season of the TV show Damages. He is currently appearing in the series Motorheads.
