In 2011, Mackenzie Astin starred in
Caught at the Zephyr Theater in Los Angeles. He played a gay man blissfully planning a wedding with his partner (Will Beinbrink), when suddenly his Bible-thumping sister arrives for some screeching.
I hadn't heard much about Mackenzie, son of
John Astin and Patty Duke, younger brother of
Sean Astin, since the 1980s. His biggest claim to fame then was a starring role on
The Facts of Life (1985-88), about four girls in a private boarding school.
By the time he hit the series, the girls had graduated and were working in a boutique, Over Our Heads. He played Andy Moffett, an orphan adopted by end-of-series lead Beverly (Cloris Leachman).
Teen magazines gave Mackenzie some attention, but not a lot. Maybe because he wasn't very muscular. He was soft, pretty, and feminine, a tween version of Kurt from
Glee.
During the 1990s, he grew hard, hairy, and rather gaunt, as he tried to distance himself from his gay-coded teen years with macho hetero-roles:
Iron Will (1994), about a dogsled competition; the Western
Wyatt Earp (1994); Ernest Hemingway's wartime buddy in
In Love and War (1996).
But Mackenzie played a lot of gay characters, too. In
Stranger Than Fiction (2000), he plays a gay man named Jared who kills someone and asks his straight friends to help him hide the body. In the short-lived tv series
First Years (2001), he played a gay lawyer living in San Francisco.
Out as bisexual, Mackenzie is married to a woman, and a gay ally.
