Ryan Phillippe Was Advised Not to Play the First Gay Teenager on Daytime TV at 17 Years Old: ‘I Was So Young. There Were Elements of Me that Were Afraid’

Ryan Phillippe admitted in a new interview with People magazine that part of him was “afraid” to accept the role of Billy Douglas on the daytime soap opera “Once Life to Live” in the early 1990s. The character was the first gay teenager in daytime television history. Phillippe played Billy for a year on the show and said it was a “really profound experience.”

“I was so young that there were elements of me that were afraid because it was such a different time,” Phillippe said, adding that people close to him also advised him to turn down the role and discouraged him from accepting the part.

“I think there were some fears associated with the point in time that we were at and it being before so many walls and ceilings have been broken in that regard,” Phillippe said. “But I know that any fears that anyone had about me doing it immediately went away once I saw the reaction that it got from the people who viewed it.”

The actor said that feedback to playing Billy from “One Life to Live” viewers was “almost instantaneous” as fan mail started pouring in. He remembers hearing from fans who had “never seen someone represent me in any entertainment before in my life.” Phillippe would also get mail from parents saying: “Watching this show on my lunch break gave me a way to connect with my LGBTQ child.”

“As that job progressed, I realized how important it was to some people,” the actor said. “And I was only 17 years old, so you don’t really have a sense of that. It was such a different time, but I very much matured through having had that experience and seeing the impact that it had for others.”

Head over to People magazine’s website to read more from Phillippe’s interview.