Gale Harold, was born as Gale Morgan Harold III, on July
10, 1969 Gale Harold is an American actor, best known for his roles on Queer
as Folk, Desperate Housewives and Vanished.
Gale Harold was born in Decatur, Georgia, the son of an engineer
father and a mother who was a real estate agent. The second of three children,
Gale Harold's parents were devout Pentecostals, and Harold had a strict Pentecostal
upbringing. At age 15, he left the church, saying that he "knew it was
bullshit." Harold's father left the church several years later.
After graduating from The Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia,
Harold attended American University in Washington, DC, on a soccer scholarship.
He began a Liberal Arts degree in romance literature, only to depart after a
year and a half following a conflict with his coach. Gale Harold then moved
to San Francisco, California, United States to pursue an interest in photography
at the San Francisco Art Institute. He worked a variety of jobs including positions
as a Ducati motorcycle technician and a construction worker.
In 1997, friend Susan Landau, daughter of actor Martin Landau,
suggested Gale Harold try acting. He relocated to Los Angeles and began a 3-year
period of intensive drama study. At 28, he was accepted into the Actors Conservatory
Program with the classical theater company A Noise Within. In his theatrical
debut, Gale Harold appeared as "Bunny" in Me and My Friends. In 2003,
he starred in Wake, produced by Susan Landau Finch and directed by her husband
Henry Leroy Finch. The movie featured a cameo by Martin Landau and the lead
part of Kyle Riven was written specifically for Harold.
In 2000, Gale Harold, landed the controversial role of unapologetic
homosexual Brian Kinney, a central character on Showtime's popular gay drama
Queer as Folk, a breakthrough performance that included a level of explicit
male homosexual sex unusual for American television. Brian Kinney's character,
as well as the show itself, elicited quite a great deal of controversy. It was
alternately lauded and criticized for its explicit depictions of gay club life.
The show ran for five successful seasons, ending in 2005.
Gale Harold had the lead role of Special Agent Graham Kelton
in the short lived FOX series Vanished in 2006, but his character was killed
off in the seventh episode and appeared only as a corpse in the eighth episode
-- in which Harold nominally starred but was actually replaced by a new leading
man, Eddie Cibrian. Cibrian received top billing only on the very last episode
to be broadcast. The show's ratings plummeted after Gale Harold's character's
death, and the last two episodes (in a new timeslot on Friday night at 8 p.m.
Eastern time) limped on with half the previous viewership. Although the loss
of viewership has also been attributed to the so-called "Friday night death
slot," it is useful to note that the show also ranked last in its time
slot, that it declined further from its first Friday airing to its second, and
that Fox's replacements in the slot (including a rebroadcast of a three year
old Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty) did considerably better.
Gale Harold also guest-starred as Wyatt Earp in two episodes
of the HBO series Deadwood and appeared twice on the CBS series The Unit. Alongside
childhood idol David Bowie, Gale is an associate producer of the documentary
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man.
Gale Harold returned to the New York stage in Tennessee Williams'
play Suddenly Last Summer on November 15, 2006, in the role of Dr. Cukrowicz
("Dr. Sugar"). Harold's co-stars in this Roundabout Theatre repertory
production, a limited Off-Broadway engagement running through January 20, 2007,
were Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino.
Gale Harold appeared in November 2007 in a guest role on ABC's
Grey's Anatomy as Shane, a paramedic and white supremacist with a swastika tattooed
on his abdomen, who is injured in an ambulance crash.
Gale Harold joined the cast of Desperate Housewives beginning
May 18, 2008 as Jackson, Susan Mayer's latest love interest.
On October 14, 2008, Harold was seriously injured in a motorcycle
accident.
