Gale: Biography
Birth Name
Gale Morgan Harold III
Date of Birth
10 July 1969, Decatur, Georgia, USA
Height
6′ 1½” (1.87 m)
Early life
Gale Harold was born in Decatur, Georgia, the son of an engineer father and a mother who was a real estate agent. The second of three children, Gale’s parents were devout Pentecostals, and Gale had a strict Pentecostal upbringing. At age 15, he left the church, saying that he “knew it was bullshit.” During adolescence, Gale recognized his own heterosexuality, but projected a counterculture attitude and thus never quite fit in, in either the social cliques in his high school or the surrounding community.
After graduating from The Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia, Gale attended American University in Washington, DC, on a soccer scholarship. He began a Liberal Arts degree in romance literature, departing after a year and a half following a conflict with his coach. Gale then moved to San Francisco, California, United States to pursue an interest in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. He worked a variety of jobs including positions as a Ducati motorcycle technician and a construction worker.
Me and My Friends
In 1997, friend Susan Landau Finch, daughter of actor Martin Landau, suggested Gale try acting. He relocated to Los Angeles and began a 3-year period of intensive drama study. At 28, he was accepted into the Actors Conservatory Program with the classical theater company A Noise Within. In his theatrical debut, Gale appeared as “Bunny” in Me and My Friends. He has also appeared on stage in productions of “Cymbeline” and “The Misanthrope”.
Career
- In 2000, Gale Harold landed the controversial role of unapologetic gay man Brian Kinney, a central character on Showtime’s popular gay drama Queer as Folk. Some actors and actresses establish their reputations in a single fell swoop with one career-defining role; certainly this was true for Gale, whose multifaceted portrayal of the masculine and sexually driven yet openly gay Brian on Showtime’s Queer as Folk helped shatter homosexual stereotypes on
Brian Kinney
television and put Gale on the fast track to stardom, his performance including a level of explicit gay male sex unusual for American television. Brian Kinney’s character, as well as the show itself, elicited quite a great deal of controversy. It was alternately lauded and criticized for its explicit depictions of gay club life. The show ran for five successful seasons, ending in 2005.
- He made his New York stage debut Off-Broadway in Austin Pendleton’s
Wake
Uncle Bob starring opposite George Morfogen.
- In 2003, he starred in Wake, produced by Susan Landau Finch and directed by her husband Henry Leroy Finch. The movie featured a cameo by Martin Landau and the lead part of Kyle Riven was written specifically for Gale.
- After Queer as Folk, Gale had the lead role of Special Agent Graham Kelton
Vanished
in the short-lived FOX series Vanished in 2006, but his character was killed off in the seventh episode and appeared only as a corpse in the eighth episode.
- Gale also guest-starred as Wyatt Earp in two episodes of the HBO series Deadwood and appeared twice on the CBS series The Unit. In 2007, Gale stepped behind the camera for the first time and entered the
Deadwood
sphere of production, associate producing the music documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2007), alongside childhood idol David Bowie.
- Gale returned to the New York stage in Tennessee Williams’ play Suddenly Last Summer on November 15, 2006, in the role of Dr. Cukrowicz (“Dr. Sugar”). Gale’s co-stars in the Roundabout Theatre repertory production, a limited Off-Broadway engagement running through January 20, 2007, were Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino.
- Gale was the male lead in the indie romantic comedy Falling for Grace,
Falling for Grace
which debuted favorably at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival (under working title East Broadway). Gale played an attorney and eligible New York bachelor, who falls into a romance with an Asian-American woman, little realizing that she’s hiding key information from him regarding her background. The film screened at festivals, theaters and campuses in the U.S., China and Germany; it was released on DVD in March, 2010.
- Gale appeared in November 2007 in a guest role on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy as Shane, a paramedic and white supremacist with a swastika tattooed on his abdomen, who is injured in an ambulance crash.
