Barry Manilow explains why he waited decades to come out as gay

During a guest appearance on HBO’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, the 80-year-old Copacabana singer said he didn’t think it was important to announce his sexuality during the earlier decades of his career.

Manilow came out in 2017, almost three years after he married his husband and manager Garry Kief in a private ceremony. The couple have been together for 45 years now, though they’ve kept much of their relationship away from the public eye.

When he came out to People magazine in 2017, Manilow — whose real name is Barry Pincus — worried he’d be “disappointing” some of his fans by revealing his sexuality. Instead, Manilow, who was 73 at the time, said the reaction from his fanbase was “beautiful.”

Garry Kief and Barry Manilow.
Garry Kief and Barry Manilow attend the 2016 Pre-Grammy Gala at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on Feb. 14, 2016, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Steve Granitz/WireImage

Despite his current feelings of nonchalance about his own coming out, Manilow said announcing his sexuality as his career was booming would have been a bad idea.

“Now being gay is no big deal,” he explained. “Back in the ’70s it would have killed a career.”

Regardless, the usually very private Manilow said he thinks “everybody knew that Garry and I were a couple all those years.”

“Really, Garry and I’ve been together for so long,” he said. “It just never dawned on me that we’re going to come out. But when we got married, it was a big deal, so we did.”

Manilow credited Kief for saving his life. He said he is thankful he had Kief to support him as his music career was taking off, despite keeping their relationship under wraps.

“As my career exploded, it was just crazy. And, you know, going back to an empty hotel room, you can get into a lot of trouble if you’re alone night after night after night,” Manilow explained. “But I met Garry right around when it was exploding. And I didn’t have to go back to those empty hotel rooms. I had somebody to cry with or to celebrate with.”

Manilow said he did not wish an isolated hotel room for any young people.

“It was pretty lonely until I met Garry. And then it was fun,” he smiled.

Kief is not Manilow’s first spouse. In 1964, Manilow married his high school sweetheart, Susan Deixler. They were married for one year.

Manilow told CNN’s Wallace he “really did love” Deixler, but added “the gay thing was pretty, pretty strong. I couldn’t deny it.”

The singer said he knew he was gay before marrying Deixler, but their marriage ended because Manilow couldn’t be the committed husband his then-wife needed. He revealed that his sexuality was not the reason his marriage failed.

“We had a very nice marriage, it was great, but I was away every night making music, as a young musician would be,” Manilow described. “It wasn’t good for me, and it wasn’t good for her.”

“I couldn’t be the proper husband,” he continued. “I was out making music every night, sowing my wild oats. I wasn’t ready to settle down.”

Brooklyn-born Manilow skyrocketed to international fame in 1974 after his release of the ever-popular pop-rock ballad Mandy. He became one of the biggest-selling musicians of all time. Prior to his success as a singer-songwriter, Manilow was behind a number of famous commercial jingles for brands like State Farm and Band-Aid — a gig that he has said helped him create catchy hooks for his own hit songs.

Barry Manilow.

Child star Mara Wilson, 37, left Hollywood after ‘Matilda’ as she was ‘not cute anymore’

In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the adorable Mara Wilson, the child actor known for playing the precocious little girl in family classics like Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street.

The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, seemed poised for success but as she grew older, she stopped being “cute” and disappeared from the big screen.

“Hollywood was burned out on me,” she says, adding that “if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless.

In 1993, five-year-old Mara Wilson stole the hearts of millions of fans when she starred as Robin Williams’ youngest child in Mrs. Doubtfire.

The California-born star had previously appeared in commercials when she received the invitation to star in one of the biggest-grossing comedies in Hollywood history.

“My parents were proud, but they kept me grounded. If I ever said something like, ‘I’m the greatest!’ my mother would remind me, ‘You’re just an actor. You’re just a kid,’” Wilson, now 37, said.

After her big screen debut, she won the role of Susan Walker – the same role played by Natalie Wood in 1947 – in 1994’s Miracle on 34th Street.

In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson writes of her audition, “I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Referencing the Oscar-winning actor who played her mom in Mrs. Doubtfire, she continues, “but I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”

‘Most unhappy’

Next, Wilson played the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, starring alongside Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman.

It was also the same year her mother, Suzie, lost her battle with breast cancer.

“I didn’t really know who I was…There was who I was before that, and who I was after that. She was like this omnipresent thing in my life,” Wilson says of the deep grief she experienced after losing her mother. She adds, “I found it kind of overwhelming. Most of the time, I just wanted to be a normal kid, especially after my mother died.”

The young girl was exhausted and when she was “very famous,” she says she “was the most unhappy.”

When she was 11, she begrudgingly played her last major role in the 2000 fantasy adventure film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. “The characters were too young. At 11, I had a visceral reaction to [the] script…Ugh, I thought. How cute,” she tells the Guardian.

‘Burned out’

But her exit from Hollywood wasn’t only her decision.

As a young teenager, the roles weren’t coming in for Wilson, who was going through puberty and outgrowing the “cute.”

She was “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair, whose bra strap was always showing.”

“At 13, no one had called me cute or mentioned the way I looked in years, at least not in a positive way,” she says.

Wilson was forced to deal with the pressures of fame and the challenges of transitioning to adulthood in the public eye. Her changing image had a profound effect on her.

“I had this Hollywood idea that if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless. Because I directly tied that to the demise of my career. Even though I was sort of burned out on it, and Hollywood was burned out on me, it still doesn’t feel good to be rejected.”

Mara as the writer

Wilson, now a writer, authored her first book “Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame,” in 2016.

The book discusses “everything from what she learned about sex on the set of Melrose Place, to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer ‘cute’ enough for Hollywood, these essays chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.”

She also wrote “Good Girls Don’t” a memoir that examines her life as a child actor living up to expectations.

“Being cute just made me miserable,” she writes in her essay for the Guardian. “I had always thought it would be me giving up acting, not the other way around.”

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