Jason Stuart first won notice on Star Search, where he lost to Martin Lawrence.
48 Facts About Jason Stuart
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Jason Stuart came out publicly in 1993 on the syndicated daytime talk show Geraldo, and has been called "the first openly gay stand-up comedian" by various media outlets.
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Jason Stuart's father Leonard Greif was Jewish and born in Poland.
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Jason Stuart's grandmother saw her best friends shot to death, and forced her family to flee even as other Jews and Poles argued that the Nazi occupation wouldn't be that bad.
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Jason Stuart's mother, Gloria, was born in Brooklyn in New York City.
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Jason Stuart was 17 years old when she married 22-year-old Leonard Greif.
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The family moved to the Fairfax neighborhood in central Los Angeles, California, when Jason Stuart was a year old.
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Jason Stuart's mother inspired him to be an artist, and he began performing at the local Jewish community center when he was eight years old.
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Jason Stuart was heavily bullied throughout his childhood for his perceived homosexuality.
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Jason Stuart developed a quick wit and sense of humor because he was terrified and because it was an effective defensive mechanism, "so they could laugh with me rather than at me," he later said.
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Jason Stuart was attacked several times in junior high school after his peers assumed he was gay.
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Jason Stuart found actors Whoopi Goldberg, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand inspiring.
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Jason Stuart saw her in the film Funny Girl, and her "sad on the inside, funny on the outside" character seemed to mirror his own life.
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Jason Stuart's parents divorced when he was 17, and he left home a year later.
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Jason Stuart had a head shot taken, and sent the photograph to the producer of every television show he liked.
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Jason Stuart's first acting gig was as an extra on the comedy series One Day at a Time in 1977.
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Jason Stuart played a student, and had to exit through a door.
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Jason Stuart supported himself by taking a wide range of odd jobs.
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Jason Stuart took acting classes and studied under such prestigious teachers as Nina Foch, Harvey Lembeck, Roy London, Allan Miller, and Lawrence Parke.
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Jason Stuart's first credited role on television came on the syndicated series The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts in 1980.
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Jason Stuart's agents did not know what parts they should have him audition for.
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Judges voted him superior to three other comedians, but Jason Stuart lost in the fourth showdown to Martin Lawrence.
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Jason Stuart's comedy act consisted of him acting heterosexual, even though he dressed outrageously or androgynously.
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Jason Stuart grew increasingly unhappy with his act, feeling he was lying to his audiences about who he was.
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Jason Stuart realized he needed to come out while leading a class on self-esteem for young performers.
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Jason Stuart first came out in early 1993 to an audience at The Laff Stop in Houston, Texas.
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Jason Stuart has described being an openly gay comedian in the 1990s as fraught with difficulties.
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Jason Stuart feared that coming out would cost him his day-job, and he was constantly aware that homophobes might physically attack him on stage or as he left the club.
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In June 1994, Jason Stuart performed his act on Broadway at the Town Hall theatre in OUTrageous Comedy '94, a benefit for the Gay Games hosted by Sandra Bernhard.
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Jason Stuart continued to do small roles on television, appearing on The John Larroquette Show, Murder, She Wrote, and seaQuest DSV, among others, but many casting directors openly refused to hire a gay man.
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Jason Stuart performed for more than 100,000 people at the Millennium March on Washington in 2000.
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Jason Stuart released his first comedy album, Gay Comedy Without A Dress, in 2001.
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In 2002, Jason Stuart had what was described as a semi-regular role playing a gay therapist on the Damon Wayans comedy My Wife and Kids.
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Jason Stuart wrote, produced, and starred in his first film, 10 Attitudes in 2004.
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Jason Stuart's first televised comedy special, Jason Stuart: Making It to the Middle, aired on the Here TV cable network in 2005.
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Jason Stuart portrayed the officiant who marries John Lithgow and Alfred Molina in the critically lauded 2014 film Love is Strange, and appeared in the highly praised 2015 independent feature Tangerine, an innovative production shot with three iPhone 5S smartphones.
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Jason Stuart found his most prominent role to date in the 2016 dramatic period film The Birth of a Nation.
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Jason Stuart was deeply disturbed by the racism and violence in the screenplay, leading him to only read it through once.
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Jason Stuart told San Diego Jewish World that the role was life-changing, and he rededicated himself to being honest and truthful in his performances.
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In January 2019, Jason Stuart's streaming independent comedy series Smothered premiered.
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Jason Stuart starred as the title character in the 2019 short film Hank, and had a small role in the 2019 independent fantasy anthology film Immortal.
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Jason Stuart published his autobiography, Shut Up, I'm Talking: Coming Out in Hollywood and Making It to the Middle, in late 2019.
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Jason Stuart is a member of the performers' union SAG-AFTRA.
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Jason Stuart co-founded and co-chairs the union's National LGBT Actors Committee, the union's first committee for LGBT people.
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Jason Stuart was one of those who excoriated journalist Ramin Setoodeh during the Newsweek gay actor controversy.
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Jason Stuart was raised Jewish, but says his family was more observant of tradition than it was religious.
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Jason Stuart says he relies on his memories of family for a good deal of his comedy act.
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Jason Stuart is "guardedly friendly" with his older brother and half-siblings from his father's second marriage, but estranged from his younger sister.