by Lauren David Peden
Teen People
December 1999/
January 2000 issue

"Staying in the closet is a very selfish thing to do" says Wilson.  You're sending a message that you're ashamed of who you are."

For most of his life, Wilson Cruz has told it like it is. At 16, the Brooklyn native and recent addition to 'Party of Five' (he plays the nanny to Charlie's baby), revealed to friends and an aunt that he was gay, and they were okay with it. His Puerto Rico-born parents weren't as understanding when he came out to them three years later. "My mother asked, and I told her." says Wilson, 25. "She took it hard at first, but within days she was fine with it. A few months later, my father asked me. It was Christmas Eve, and he did not take it well at all. He kicked me out of the house."

Wilson, then 20, had just landed the role of Rickie Vasquez on 'My So-Called Life', but hadn't received his first paycheck. For three months he slept in his car, then he rented an apartment in L.A. once he started work. Playing a gay high schooler proved to be cathartic. "We used some of my experiences in the show." Wilson explains. Most memorable was a Christmas episode in which Rickie's parents kick him out of the house after an argument. "It helped me forgive my father." says Wilson. "Watching the episode helped him understand what it was that he did, and what it was that I went through. It helped us move on." These days, the New York City-based Wilson, who has been dating an aspiring R&B singer since last winter, has no fear. "I didn't want to be one of those actors who lied for the rest of their life." he says. While life after 'My So Called Life' has found him specializing in gay-oriented roles - he has appeared on Broadway in RENT and on TV's Ally McBeal - Wilson is wary of being typecast. "I'm not willing to do a stereotypically gay character like the screaming queen." he says. "I want my characters to be life-affirming people who have strength. Never victims."