Steve Zahn: From 1990s golden boy to 2020s depressed dad, with nudity all the way down

  

Link to the nudity

Steve Zahn started his career in theater Biloxi Blues, Bye, Bye, Birdie, and the off-Broadway Sopistry: "a beloved philosophy professor is charged with sexually assaulting a male student. Gay themes are starting early.  

Both Steve and his costar Ethan Hawke were cast in Reality Bites (1994), about depressed Gen X-ers in Houston. Steve plays one of those endlessly depressed gay guys you see in movies of the era, who doesn't actually do anything gay except come out to his mother.

 More weird, experimental, and depressing bits followed, such as SubUrbia (1996): Steve plays Buff, one of a group of disillusioned teens in the bleak urban wastelands of the 1990s.  I didn't live in a bleak urban wasteland, and there were no gay characters, so I couldn't relate. 

In a 1995 episode of Friends, we learn that Phoebe married a gay Canadian ice hockey player (Steve), so he can get his green card.  Except he decides that he's not gay after all.  Seems like a pattern developing. 

Next came The Object of My Affection (1998), which I didn't see because it seemed homophobic: a gay guy turns straight because women are so hot, but then goes back to gay again.  Steve plays the gay-straight-gay guy's brother.

I avoided Saving Silverman (2001), thinking that it was about a lesbian who changes to straight. That appears to be another movie: this Silverman is a guy about to make a disastrous marriage, so his friends try to reunite him with the Girl of His Dreams.  One of the friends, J.D. (Jack Black), comes out and marries his high school Coach (R. Lee Ermy), but I think it's played for homophobic laughs.  Steve plays one of the friends, who here is trying to become flexible enough to perform oral sex on himself.  Just ask JD to do it for you.

In the thriller Joy Ride (2001),  Lewis (Paul Walker), traveling cross-country to pursue the Girl of His Dreams, of course, stops to pick up his estranged brother (Steve).  

They run afoul of a road-rage driven trucker, but meet a girl for Steve to fade-out with.  Plus they have to walk into a gas station nude.

More Steve after the break

We see some butt in Bandidas (2006), and maybe a flash of cock, but it goes by too quickly to know for sure.

In Sunshine Cleaning (2008), a responsible-goof-off pair of sisters start a crime scene cleanup service and have relationship problems.  Steve plays the married lover of the responsible one, who shows some butt.  The goof-off starts off straight, turns lesbian, and then turns back to straight again.  

During the 2000s, Steve starred in several short-lived tv series: Mind Games, Treme, The Crossing, Valley of the Boom.  None of them sound familiar, but I remember his voice work on the Roderick Rules series, and a four-episode story arc on Modern Family as Claire and Phil's obnoxious neighbor.

A big "nope" to White Lotus in 2021 due to the extremely homophobic portrayals of gay people, written by none other than the Devil, Mike White.  Zahn plays a middle-aged father who faces a testicular cancer scare, and discovers that his own father was gay and died of AIDS.  I guess they're interconnected.

We see him with a prosthetic cock, and some of the ugliest hands on Earth. Definite deal breaker.

I think my favorite Steve Zahn role is that of Uncle Peter, the snake-handling-preacher turned militia leader on The Righteous Gemstones, Season 3.  He doesn't convert any lesbians, and he's in charge of a male-only group like Kelvin's God Squad.

The nude photos are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends