Boomer kids know Brian Kerwin as the bumbling, naive deputy Birdie Hawkins on the trucker drama BJ and the Bear (1979) and its spin off, Sheriff Lobo (1979-81). Though he played second banana to the con-artist sheriff Lobo (Claude Akins), he was popular enough to gain some teen idol attention, including some beefcake shots.
But Brian Kerwin had a long career before and after Lobo. At first his boyish, "all-American" good looks and lanky, muscular physique got him cast in many Western and redneck roles: a pioneer on The Chisholms (along with Ben Murphy of Alias Smith and Jones); someone named T. J. Swackhammer in Hometown U.S.A.; a Civil War soldier in The Blue and the Gray; a country-western singer's love interest in Blue Grass. More recently he has moved on to play New Sensitive Men and heterosexual romantic leads.
In Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Brian plays Ed Reese, a bisexual who dates Arnold (Harvey Fierstein) before he meets Alan (Matthew Broderick)
On the tv series Beggars and Choosers (1999-2001), Brian played Rob Malone, president of a struggling tv network, with a gay coworker played by Tuc Watkins.
He was the executive producer of Common Ground (2000), a ground-breaking tv movie about gay life in the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 1990s, written by famous gay writers Paula Vogel, Terrence McNally, and Harvey Fierstein, and starring a laundry list of big-name stars: Jason Priestley, Margot Kidder, Mimi Rogers, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
And on stage, in Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia (2005), he plays a man who's romantically involved with a goat -- which tends to lessen everyone's shock when his son announces that he is gay.