Monday, May 18, 2009

TheTVObserver: Top40 First Edition Favorite - Gale Harold


It was a simple question “Which of these stars is your favorite?“ and fans commented from all corners of the world and it was overwhelming when we realized practically all comments favored Gale Harold. Mr. Harold officially became the favorite star based on the number and nature of comments posted by fans on TheTVObserver’s Top40 Hot TV Hunks First Edition. This was without competition from some hot guys....but Brian or sorry...Gale won our readers hearts.

In celebration of our first edition and the overwhelming number of comments in favor of Gale Harold. We have decided to pay Gale Harold a special tribute for being the favorite Star of our Top40 Hot TV Hunks’ First Edition with a specially produced video. Enjoy....

Incase you did not catch our StarSpread on Gale Harold or you don’t know who he is? Gale Harold was a virtual unknown when he was tapped to play Brian Kinney, a successful advertising executive with a blatant disregard for social conventions, in the Showtime adaptation of the popular British drama "Queer as Folk" (2000- ).

The dark-haired actor was born and raised in Georgia and attended American University in Washington, DC before heading west to San Francisco and art school. While working as a manager of a motorcycle shop, he was spotted by a producer who convinced him to try his hand at acting. Harold formed an association with the Los Angeles Theatre Center where he made his debut in "Me and My Friend" and later appeared in a variety of classic plays.

After going through the grueling audition process for "Queer as Folk", he impressed the series' producers with his natural smoldering qualities and innate charisma. While viewers and critics were at first divided or negatively inclined to his performance as Brian, as time wore on, he grew into the role, adding layers of depth to the seemingly shallow hedonist. Harold used his 2001 hiatus from the series to make his NYC stage debut playing a homophobe confronting his AIDS-stricken relative in the Off-Broadway play "Uncle Bob"

  • 2008 Joined the cast of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" as Jackson Braddock, Susan Mayer's latest love interest
  • 2006 Acted on the New York stage in Tennessee Williams' play "Suddenly Last Summer"
  • 2006 Played the lead role of Special Agent Graham Kelton in the short lived FOX series, "Vanished"
  • 2006 Produced the documentary "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man"
  • 2003 Played the lead role in "Wake"; written and directed by Roy Finch
  • 2001 NYC stage acting debut in the Off-Broadway production "Uncle Bob"
  • 2000 Appeared in the ensemble of an L.A. production of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"
  • 2000 - 2005 TV series debut, playing the central role of smooth-talking sex addict Brian Kinney in the Showtime drama, "Queer as Folk"
  • 1997 Began a three year period of intensive drama study in Los Angeles
  • Raised in Atlanta, Georgia
  • Moved to San Francisco to attend art school
  • Stage acting debut in "Me and My Friend" at the Los Angeles Theatre Center
A special thank you to all the readers who commented on our first edition!

We still have 30 more stars to feature and our next edition premieres this Thursday on TheTVObserver and the competition gets hot and steamy with some of the hottest stars competing to be the weeks favorite. I guess we will see which guy you consider hot and your personal favorite.
We hope you have enjoyed our tribute video as much as we did. We could not stop dancing to the music over and over...okay you get the picture.


Related Links
TheTVObserver: Top40 First Edition Favorite (Video)
TheTVObserver: Gale Harold on StarSpread
TheTVObserver: Gale Harold (Video) -5 Star Rated
TheTVObserver: Gale Harold Returns
TheTVObserver: Gale Harold Returns (Video) - 5 Star Rated
TheTVObserver: Jackson is Back
TheTVObserver: Brian Kinney's True Love

By TheTVObserver

@ 2009 © TheTVObserver. All Rights Reserved
Pictures used on TheTVObserver graphics and information sourced from third parties are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this tribute and your attention!!

Gale deserves all the best and be your Top40 First Edition Favorite it´s great

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this...Gale is a great actor and deserves it competely.

CF said...

Knowing how rare is it for Gale to do interviews and be featured in articles, I enjoyed this overwhelming treat this month. Being the "Top40 First Edition Favorite is a much appreciated icing on the cake. Thank you so much for this TVObserver.
Even though Gale is a guest star on a high-rated show, I feel he's very underused; his talent is still pretty much wasted. They're not giving the character anything to do. Hopefully if he stays on DH, they use just a bit of his amazing abilities. I'm not saying it should be as intense as Kyle in Wake, but at least as good as Morrison in Particles of Truth. Sorry for the nagging, but I was really disappointed with the last episode of DH. I really hope Gale gets good material to work with, real soon. Thank you again, TVObserver.

Anonymous said...

This is awesome! Great tribute to Gale!

Anonymous said...

come on. was there really any doubt? with his fan base? how could he not be number one? in our hearts and our fantasies.

Anonymous said...

I thought Gale Harold was great on "Queer as Folk" from the very beginning, and I'm not alone. The distinguished commentator Camille Paglia (author of "Sexual Personae") wrote this in SALON:

"I enjoyed the two-hour debut last weekend of Showtime's gay soap opera, "Queer as Folk," principally because of the glamorous performance by Gale Harold of cruel-as-ice Brian, who looks like Donatello's David all grown up. He reminded me of Harry Hamlin's smolderingly on-the-prowl gay stud in Arthur Hiller's groundbreaking "Making Love" (1982), starring Kate Jackson and Michael Ontkean."

And a little while later, she wrote this:

"A footnote in Michalis Tiverios' essay also proved piquant. Plutarch's profile of Alcibiades, the beautiful aristocrat who sweeps into Plato's "Symposium" to tease and tempt Socrates and who in real life led Athens into the imperialist disaster of the Sicilian expedition, claims Alcibiades had a "gilded shield" that, "instead of bearing a device of his ancestors, displayed an Eros bearing a thunderbolt."

This set me daydreaming: I wondered whether any film has yet been made -- perhaps some lurid Italian-Spanish co-production of the late 1960s? -- that features the charismatic, bisexual Alcibiades. His story should have been dramatized in all its destructive, narcissistic glory by Oscar Wilde, who wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray" instead. Of course we've been missing the ideal actor, but I think that Gale Harold, who plays Brian, the swashbuckling bitch-king stud of Showtime's "Queer as Folk," has both the intoxicating arrogance and the flawless Greek profile to play Alcibiades. Get on it, Hollywood!"

I still wish Hollywood would get on it.

Anonymous said...

By the way, the audition process for "Queer as Folk" you describe as "grueling" may have been grueling for the producers, but not for Gale Harold. Here's what happened, according to producer Dan Lipman:

"It was an extremely distressing experience trying to cast Brian, because of what we discovered to be the massive amount of homophobia [in Hollywood]," says Cowen. There are still traces of the pain clearly evident in his voice. "We were so shocked, and so upset, because we went into this thinking that in the years since An Early Frost things had changed. And what we had discovered was that things hadn't changed one iota."

Late on a Friday afternoon, with a meeting the following Monday at 8:30 a.m. scheduled with the Showtime executives, ostensibly to introduce their cast, Lipman and Cowen still didn't have their Brian Kinney. There were two more actors to read for the part, and at the last minute one of them had dropped out.

"It was a test of faith, and by Friday at 5:00 p.m. faith was running out," Lipman says ruefully. At 5:45 p.m., their casting director called. "She said, 'Come on over right now, he's here!' We raced over to the office." The casting director ushered in one last actor. "In walks Gale Harold," Lipman remembers, "and we're looking at him, and he's reading the scene, and Ron and I are looking at each other, and it's like, 'Is he fucking fabulous?'"

"He fell out of the sky," Cowen breathes. "There's truly no other explanation."

Anonymous said...

Thanks!!!!!!!!!1
Mr.Gale Harold is a very talented actor and he deserves the best.

TheTVObserver said...

Thanks guys for your comments. We just wanted to celebrate Gale and all the comments posted by our readers.

We can't stop dancing to the promo's tune/music...."you're my Dolce&Gabbana...." lol.

This was awesome fun!

TheTVObserver said...

@Anonymous #4 and #5, the comments you posted are very interesting and quite informative. Thanks.

It would have been even more fun to know who you are. Thanks again for commenting and for sharing the extra information.

Let's see who takes the crown this Thursday...on TheTVObserver's Top40 Hot TV Hunks Second Edition.

I wonder if Gale will win the "Ultimate Top Ten Hot TV Hunks"?. I guess you guys will decide with your comments.

Thank again for all your comments.

Anonymous said...

Desde,España,absolutamente de acuerdo con el resultado de esta votación!!!!I love Gale!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this tribute to Gale Harold, he's a very talented actor,and I enjoyed every single tv show he worked on.
He deserves this and much,much more.

Anonymous said...

so great what you done for gale he is so fabulous such a good actor wish we could see and hear about him more love to see him on anything he is so beautiful someone please give him his on show, thANKS FOR HIM BEING YOUR FIRST TOP 40 THANKS OBSERVER