Visibility is able to transform a career in aspects, which have no bearing on talent. To several lesbian celebrities, coming out was succeeded by a lower profile success, one that was quantified in adopted roles, below-the-line jobs, and red-carpet-free lives.
To the masses, less visible is construed as gone. In fact, a lot of these women remained creatively active and they just shifted their energies into teaching, directing, writing, philanthropy or businesses that do not need such publicity on a regular basis.
1. Kristy McNichol
Kristy McNichol retired from the acting world many years earlier than she came out publicly, and decided on the course of her life herself, but later. In 2001, she abandoned regular screen work and appeared publicly in 2012, stating that she needed a slower pace of life and health and stress were her reasons. She retired into a teaching career and less glamorous day-to-day life after a career which yielded two Emmy awards and memorable parts in the late 1970s and 1980s. McNichol has come out of hiding every now and then to do charitable events, but her post-fame life has been mostly characterized by non-involvement in the entertainment mill.
2. Kelly McGillis
Kelly McGillis was a household name in the 1980s and has slowly reinvented the definition of what it means to be a working actor. She emerged in 2009 and proceeded to establish a life in North Carolina where she taught acting and worked in regional theater as well as occasional screen work. One of the interviews explains the reason why that change seemed needed: to her, the connection to other people became a lot more significant than the connection to fame. She was also not shy to discuss sobriety and self-identity, such as the challenge of associating value with visibility. That turning point- away from craft, family values, and privacy- assisted in shaping her image even after her largest studio years.
3. Portia de Rossi
The shift that Portia de Rossi has made was not between being relevant and being in a retreat, but between one form of spotlight and another form of influence. Having appeared in the mid-2000s and getting married to Ellen DeGeneres in 2008, she eventually stopped full-time acting in 2018 and began focusing on art and philanthropy. When she was interviewed about her reason to leave acting to establish a business venture, an art publishing one, she stated that she has always loved art and characterized the traditional gallery world as being exclusionary. Her personal life has been familiar, but her business identity has been based more on business-building and art-focused charity than on T.V. schedules.
4. Amanda Bearse
Amanda Bearse emerged in the early 1990s when she was on a long-running sitcom as a major actor, and has since been gradually establishing a second career which does not involve appearing on camera. She has over the years managed to become a television director working on multiple series in the form of episodes but still has an association with stage performances. The direction she takes underscores the usual post-spotlight truth: a lot of performers are able to stabilize and express their creativity by retreating behind the scenes, where staying longer is not pegged on celebrity branding.
5. Meredith Baxter
Meredith Baxter later transitioned to advocacy, speaking, and selected screen work by coming out publicly in 2009 and spending most of her efforts on these areas instead of the type of sustained network visibility that characterized her previous career. She has also written a memoir, Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering, that dealt with self-esteem and complex personal history as well as fame. Though her acting did not vanish completely, the years after her coming out were characterized by infrequent projects and more conscious appearance.
6. Alexandra Hedison
The career pivot of Alexandra Hedison is unique as it was fully out of the casting system of Hollywood. She later shifted into fine art photography after her previous actions in her career and produced gallery exhibitions and long-term photographic series that were exhibited in different parts of the globe. Non-pursuits, but practice, becoming a visual artist and having to work in collaboration and at a slower, more muffled pace, became the focus of her career life.
7. Patricia Velásquez
Patricia Velasquez emerged in 2015 and since then balances between acting and humanitarian activity such as the foundation of a charitable organization that helps Indigenous people. Her career-facing image has been more of cultural work and advocacy than mainstream studio presence, which is representative of a wider trend in the general entertainer population favoring impact projects over publicity-driven projects. It does not have to disappear, but rather, it becomes a redistribution of time and focus on mission-based leadership.
8. Clea DuVall
Clea DuVall did not retire out of the industry but entered in the field of authorship. Since her coming out, she has devoted more of her energy to writing and directing, directing such productions as The Intervention and co-creating the series High School. The less frequent her on-screen appearances became, the more frequent the behind-the-scenes roles she played, a trend which can be seen as showing how some actors may remain creatively viable by switching to development and direction.
9. Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye has been out for long and is strongly related to the pioneering queer cinema, and afterwards broadened in influence with episodic TV direction work and education. She has been more of an institutional, as opposed to a celebrity-driven, presence, having been molded in classrooms, workshops and creative leadership, as opposed to promotional cycles. Such a career might appear silent externally, but it is still very much at the core of the work that other people continue to do.
There is a similar line in these careers: the shift towards more privacy-protecting choices, more wellbeing-focused choices, or more creativity-controlling choices. The transition may be interpreted by the audience as silence; to those people who live through the transition, the work usually goes on–in other rooms.
