Billy Howle: A serious actor, crazy cute, who shows his stuff a lot. Do you need anything else? With bonus Tommy Knight

Link to the n*de dudes

I've reviewed two tv series starring British actor Billy Howle (not Howlie), and two things about him stand out:

1. He is crazy cute.  What we used to call dreamy, the sort of guy who elicits fantasies of holding hands in the moonlight rather than going downtown.

 

2. Speaking of going downtown, he is not shy about showing his stuff on screen.

I always ask two questions in these profiles.

1. Is he gay in real life?

Billy has no social media presence, but various interviews note that he is in a long-term relationship with a lady.  He could be bi or gay-and-closeted, but for now we'll call him straight. 

2. Has he played any gay characters?

This one will take some research.  We'll start with his bio.  

Billy was born in Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands, about an hour from Birmingham, son of a college professor and a "schoolteacher."  He graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in 2013.  His theatrical credits include:

The Ibsen play Ghosts (2015), which is about religion, free love, and incest, not about ghosts.  We had to read Ibsen in college.  Ugh.

Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night (2016).  We had to read O'Neill, too.  Double ugh.

Hamlet (2022).  Maybe a gay subtext between the Prince and Mercutio.

Dear Octopus (2024), which is about a large, suffocating family, not an octopus.  At least it's not Ionesco.

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (2024) about marital problems.

No significant gay content, I'm afraid, and pretentiousness as the summum bonum.  

Next, Billy's on-screen roles.  He has 21 acting credits on the IMDB.  A  mostly pretentious lot, with only one science fiction movie and not a whiff of comedy.  I'll check the projects that I've reviewed already, those listed as "known for," and those with n*de scenes.

Already Reviewed:

The Perfect Couple (2024).  When the Maid of Honor is murdered on the night before the wedding, everyone is a suspect, including the Bride and Groom.  Billy plays the Groom's brother, who has a girlfriend. 

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022). Lapsed Mormon Allen (Billy) is accused of murdering his wife, but he says that his fundamentalist family did it to punish her for wanting a career and being uppity. 

More after the break

Here at the New Yorker: homophobia, elitism, long-ago homework assignments, and a scary 18th century dandy

I've spent most of my life on college campuses, as student, grad student, and professor, but still, I often feel out of place.

When I'm not out, there's constant heterosexism:
"Will your wife be coming with you?"
"There will be a lot of single women at the party."
"There's not a man alive who wouldn't want to be with her!"

When I'm out, it changes to homophobia:
"How do you know you're gay if you've never tried it with a woman?"
"Why do gay men act so feminine all the time?"
"Are you the boy or the girl in your relationship?"

And the elitism is constant:
"How could you stand growing up in Illinois?  Nothing to do but ride tractors and milk cows!"
"Why did you go to Augustana?  Why didn't you go to Harvard, like everyone else?"
My favorite: "Television?  Ugh!  Mindless drivel.  I haven't watched a television program in 30 years."

Elitism and homophobia come together in The New Yorker, a weekly magazine for people who think that Manhattan is the center of the universe, regardless of where they happen to live.

I lived in Manhattan for three years, and none of the gay people I knew read it.  But all heterosexual college professors did.  And quite a few outside of New York, in California, Florida, and Ohio.

Why is it required reading for elite heterosexuals but anathema for gay people, regardless of their elitism?

1. It's the height of insularity.  Manhattan is the center of the universe, California is full of wannabes, the rest of the U.S. is a "flyover" full of cows and rednecks, and the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Gay people know that West Hollywood is the center of the universe.

2. It's the height of heterosexism.  Endless stories about elite heterosexuals agonizing over failed marriages and dying relatives.

Endless cartoons about heterosexuals saying things that make sense to them, but not to gay people.  This guy tells his date, "I want Chardonnay, but I like saying 'Pinot Grigio."  She is shocked.  What's going on?

3. Gay people appear only as subjects of heterosexual discomfort.  In a similar restaurant, perhaps the same one, two feminine stereotypes are arguing (notice the limp wrist).  One says: "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last gay person on Earth."

Why is this funny?  Because he specifies "last gay person?"

Because it's rather disquieting for a heterosexual to think about gay people discussing marriage?

4. The stories are about men and women having relationship problems. Some of my least favorite writers, those who made me shudder when I was forced to read them in college, were published in The New Yorker:  J.B. Salinger, John Updike, Philip Roth, James Thurber, Joan Didion.

"A Perfect Day for Banana Fish."  What the heck is a banana fish? All I know is that someone dies.  Somebody always dies in these stories.

More after the break

Miles Heizer: Gay and nearly-gay roles, a girlfriend and some boyfriends, plus some c*ocks, bums, and Guy's Bar

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I am certainly going to visit a bar full of  guys, even if it's spelled wrong.

Or is Guy the owner, so it's Guy's bar?

I'm going either weay, but I'm not sure if Miles Heizer wants to come along.

You probably remember Miles from Parenthood (2010-2015), the sitcom with Craig T. Nelson and his four children and eight grandchildren.  It was like Modern Family without the diversity.  Miles played grandson Drew Holt: shy, sensitive, artistic, but still girl-crazy, with several girlfriends fighting over him.

The Greenville, Kentucky native was born in 1994, and began acting in 2005, with many guest spots before Parenthood, plus Rails & Ties (2007), about a young boy who survives a catastrophic train crash, and Rudderless (2014), about a father grieving over his dead son.

He had some gay-positive roles after Parenthood.

In Love, Simon (2018), he plays Cal, whom the closeted Simon mistakenly identifies as Blue, another closeted teen who posts about his experiences online.  Cal is not Blue, but he offers an ear if Simon wants to talk, suggesting that he may be bisexual, or at least an ally.

In 13 Reasons Why (2017-20), which spends three seasons explaining why a high school girl killed herself, Miles plays Alex Standell, who kisses his boyfriend Timothy Granaderos, after they are named prom kings, and everyone in the school applauds. 

He also gives us a n*de scene.  Wait, that's a woman you're on top of.  What gives?

According to Wikipedia, he dates Jessica in Seasons 1-3, then Winston Williams (Deaken Bluman) and Charlie St. George (Tyler Barnhart) in Season 4. 

Wait -- AZ Nude Men says that Miles is kissing Timothy Granaderos (left), but the fan wiki says Charlie St. George.  Granaderos plays Montgomery de la Cruz, a series antagonist who hooks up with guys, but isn't actually gay. 

Take your pick.  

After 13 Reasons, Miles appeared in two podcast series, Undertow: Narcosis and The Sisters.

He also starred in The Ex-Husbands (2023): a Manhattan dentist (Griffin Dunne of American Werewolf in London gets dumped by his wife, so he flies out to Tulum to crash his son's bachelor party. Whoops, that son gets dumped, too. Miles plays another brother, who is gay and therefore doesn't have to worry about marriage (um...gay marriage happens?)

He starred in Boots (2025), a Netflix dramedy about a closeted gay teen who joins the Marines in 1980.

It gets weird after the break

Michael Cade: California Dreams, Chaplin, Devils, and That Chest. With a n*de Aaron and the Greek God Pan

After Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) demonstrated that Saturday mornings didn't have to be all cartoons, every kid in the country suddenly started eating their Cheerios to impossibly buffed teenagers in impossibly affluent high schools.  California Dreams (1992-1997) may not have been the best of the Saved clones-- I don't know if "best" is operant here -- but it was the most beefcake heavy.  

The premise: two Iowa teens, Matt (Brent Gore) and Jenny, move to California, where they form a band called California Dreams.  Wait -- why are you dreaming about California, when you live there?  

We pause this profile to quote the famous "California Dreamin'", which I heard many times during dark dank winters in the Midwest as I plotted my move to the gay freedom of West Hollywood:

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. 
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
If I didn't tell her, I could leave today.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.

Most of the Saved clones had the same basic characters: the schemer, who works every angle yet fails every class, and still gets into Harvard; the surly outsider who resents the schemer getting everything so easily; the goofball who litters his speech with nonsequiters; the popular girl, who ends up with the schemer; and the smart girl, who ends up with the surly outsider.  In California Dreams, Michael Cade, left, is the schemer, band manager Sly Winkle (sly wink, get it?)

William James Jones, left, is surly outsider Tony Wicks, the band's drummer and sometime soloist. 

In Season 2, Aaron Jackson joined the cast as Sly's cousin Mark Winkle, performing the goofball role. 

William and Aaron were cute, but they didn't get a lot of teen idol attention. Michael and That Chest were the definite stars. Shirtless photos littered the teen magazines and the gay celebrity websites.

I didn't watch California Dreams often -- on Saturday mornings, we usually watched Joel and the Bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, then had lunch, browsed bookstores, bought groceries at the Gay Safeway, and went to the gym.  In the evening, we watched Mama's Family and The Golden Girls, then went cruising at Mugi or the Faultline...uh-oh, I feel "The Way We Were" coming on.

Can it be that it was all so simple then, 
Or has time rewritten every word?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?  Could we?

Sorry, these profiles from pre-2000 shows make me nostalgic.

Michael was born Michael Ocello in Elmwood Park, New Jersey in 1972.  He was interested in acting, but avoided drama club so he wouldn't be bullied -- "when I was in high school, being in the drama club wasn't cool," he notes in a teen magazine interview. Sounds like he was worried that people would think he was gay, which was a major concern in the late 1980s.

But the day he graduated in May 1990, he started taking acting lessons.  After a year, a few commercials, and a lot of bare chests, he moved to California where he could be open about his...um...acting.  It took only a few months for his chest to get a guest shot on Baywatch as Young Bobby, brother of focus character Eddie (Billy Warlock)

Michael also appeared in Chaplin (1992), the biopic of the silent movie star, as his nephew Sydney Chaplin Jr.

More after the break.