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"I'm learning on a daily basis ... from all of the kids,” the acclaimed actor says.
Award-winning actor Marcia Gay Harden credits her three queer children with making her an advocate for LGBTQ+ equality.
She “always will be” an activist because of her kids, she told People. Eulala, 25, is nonbinary; Hudson, 19 is gay; and his twin, Julitta, is fluid, as Harden revealed last year on the Drag Isn’t Dangerous telethon. She has learned much from them, she said in the interview.
“I’ve learned an awful lot about gender nonconformity, and I’ve learned a lot about what I was already understanding in my own life, even in high school, my first boyfriend was gay and was too afraid to come out until later,” she said.
“I was already learning a lot about the gay community, but at the time, we spoke more about gay community rather than queer community,” Harden continued. “And I think now the kids talk a lot about the queer community, and it’s much more expansive. It’s much more gender nonconforming. It’s much more embracing, actually. … I’m learning on a daily basis about that from all of the kids.”
After her telethon appearance, “I got so much hate mail and so much how I'm grooming my kids and all this, that, and the other,” she said. “The response from each one of [my kids] was, ‘Work it, mom. Work it, mom. You’re doing something right if that’s happening.’” The “hatred” of LGBTQ+ people “has to stop,” she said.
“Having a child will literally be the greatest masterclass anybody will ever have,” Harden noted, adding, “And probably in love, and the ability to love. I’ve learned to accept each of them for the beauty that they are and dispel expectation. I’ve learned that at the end of the day, it’s their life. It is their life. I want them to be happy in it.”
Harden is an Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for playing artist Lee Krasner in 2000’s Pollock. Now 64, she’s currently appearing in the TV series So Help Me Todd, portraying a lawyer with a problematic son.
Her own children, Harden told People, are “all artists on some level” and “all have an incredible humanity as well.” She further noted, “I’m really supportive of what they want to do and who they are.”
The full interview will be in the next issue of People, out Friday.
