Robert Gant

Like two of his business partners in the Southern California-based, LGBT-centered film production company Mythgarden -- Chad Allen and Craig Dougherty -- actor/producer Robert Gant made headlines for his efforts to expand the scope of homosexual roles in Hollywood projects beyond conventional, overwrought, two-dimensional stereotypes. A graduate of Georgetown University law school, Gant originally intended to practice law in Southern California, but instead headed into acting and scored a major success with his portrayal of HIV-infected college professor Ben Bruckner on the groundbreaking Showtime television series Queer as Folk. Subsequent projects included the Steven Monroe-directed suspense thriller The Contract (2001) and one of the leads in the Mythgarden-produced drama Save Me. Co-starring Allen, the film told of a young man drawn into a homosexual "recovery center" by some bigoted evangelical Christians; Gant plays the young veteran of the couple's treatment who finds himself increasingly drawn into a gay relationship with Allen's character.