People News

Thomas Jane's early gay homeless experience

By April MacIntyre Oct 4, 2011, 1:57 GMT

09/18/2011 - Thomas Jane - HBO\'s 2011 Emmy After Party - Arrivals - Pacific Design Center - West Hollywood, CA, USA © David Gabber / PR Photos

In a revealing interview with the LA Times, actor Thomas Jane, 42, who stars as Ray Drecker, a coach turned prostitute in the HBO dramedy "Hung", actually had to hustle Santa Monica Boulevard, a well known gay sex stroll in Los Angeles.

Jane's character Ray took a big hit in this economy, and his coaching and teaching jobs do not give him enough to live on.  His happenstance foray into the world of prostitution changes the game for him.  Ray is well-suited for the life of a gigolo and puts him in a confidence zone that attracts his ex-wife (Anne Heche) back to him, and pits two women against each other, each vying for the role of Ray's pimp.

This season, which began October 2 on HBO, sees Ray fired from his teaching job and he is whoring full-time. Tanya [Jane Adams] and Ray have started a new business together, except there's a red-headed (Rebecca Creskoff) fly in the ointment.

But in the LA Times interview, Jane opens up about his early days as an actor in Los Angeles:

"Hey, you grow up as an artist in a big city, as James Dean said, you're going to have one arm tied behind your back if you don't accept people's sexual flavors. You know, when I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless, I didn't have any money and I was living in my car. I was 18. I wasn't averse to going down to Santa Monica Boulevard and letting a guy buy me a sandwich. Know what I mean?"

Jane revealed that he was surviving and opening up his experiences at the same time.

"You're a lot more open to experimentation as a young man. And for me, being a young artist and broke in Los Angeles, I was exploring my sexual identity. And probably because of my middle-class, white blue-collar upbringing, I would have never had the opportunity to confront some of my own fears and prejudices had I not been hungry enough to be forced to challenge myself in that way."

Jane was glad he had a chance to decide which kind of sex he preferred:

"It blew the doors off of my conventional upbringing and thinking and opened up possibilities for me that were akin to World War III. And then you actually have a choice, and I chose to be a heterosexual guy because that's what my DNA dictates and my nurture dictates that I am."

"... Until you've tasted the food, you don't know whether you'll like it or not, as my mom always said."