For a few years in the mid-1980s, Scott Grimes was as famous as
Scott Baio or
Matthew Broderick.His red hair and boyish smile drew the interest of teen magazines, and his muscles and penchant for nudity made him a fave rave for many gay teens.
Not to mention his cool fashion sense and hard-to-miss bulges.
His body of work is comparatively small, but wide-ranging, from the pedestrian to the masterful to the ridiculous.
The pedestrian: guest spots on all of the standard tv programs of the 1980s, including
Charles in Charge,
Who's the Boss, My Two Dads, Wings, and
21 Jump Street. Starring roles in several series, including
Goode Behavior, Party of Five,
E.R., and
American Dad (his current gig, voicing the teenage son Steve Smith).
The masterful: the miniseries
Band of Brothers (2001), about an infantry division during World War II who learn heroism, courage, devotion, and love. Scott played Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey, who is deeply affected by the bloodshed around him, and is always looking for someone to love.
In
Dreamkeeper (2003), the Lakota Sioux elder Peter Chasing Horse tells his sullen, "modern" grandson, Shane (Eddie Spears), stories about their culture as they travel to a pow wow in Albuquerque. A Red-Headed Stranger (Scott) joins them. As the Stranger and Shane grapple with their unstated but strongly articulated homoerotic desire, Grandfather tells them the store of Tehan, a white man who joined the Kiowa. He, too, felt an unstated homoerotic desire.
Even Scott's ridiculous projects have some gay content.
In the
Gremlins clone
Critters (1986), an an army of small, round, squish monsters, sort of like tribbles with teeth, eat their way through a small town. Brad (Scott) combats them, along with two intergalactic bounty hunters. One morphs into an androgynous glam-rocker named Johnny Steele (Terence Mann), who draws the interest of both Scott and town drunk Charlie (Don Opper). At the end of the movie, Charlie asks for and receives an intergalactic bounty-hunting job, and the three zap off into space together.
In
Critters 2 (1988), Brad is still at work stamping out critters, and the three bounty hunters return to Earth. His coworker dies in combat, and Johnny, grief-stricken, "destabilizes" (has an alien nervous breakdown). Charlie keeps his arm around him, comforting him, saying “I can’t go on without you." They embrace. The music swells. They have found true love.
Scott is also a talented singer, with three albums to his credit:
Scott Grimes (1989), Livin' on the Run (2005), and
Drive (2010). His songs are moody and dark, mostly about lost loves and growing old, but most do not specify the gender of his love, making them resonate with both heterosexual and gay audiences.
He is a gay ally, and often contributes to pro-gay causes.
