ROCK HUDSON

Rock Hudson was born in 1925. He was 6'4" (or was he 6'5"?) and he looked like a movie star, and it didn't take him long to become one. Some of his movies include: Giant (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Seconds, and Ice Station Zebra. He appeared in around 70 movies, and starred in a TV series, McMillan & Wife, in the 1970s. He was a gay homosexual man at a time when one couldn't reveal that and continue in movies, and he had to hide that throughout his career (even having a sham marriage with interior designer Phyllis Gates in the 1950s), until he developed AIDS and could no longer hide it. When he publicly admitted that he had AIDS, it changed the public perception of the disease (particularly because Nancy Reagan was a very good friend of his and her husband was the President of the United States), and helped gain the funding and research that has led to so many advances in fighting it. He passed away in 1985 at the age of 59 from complications from AIDS.