Sean Hayes

Sean Hayes born 26 June 1970

Sean Patrick Hayes is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his role as Jack McFarland in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, for which he won an Emmy Award, four SAG Awards, one American Comedy Award, and six Golden Globes nominations.

Hayes was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is of Irish descent and was raised as a Roman Catholic. After graduating from high school, Hayes attended Illinois State University. There he studied piano performance and conducting, with a special focus on the music of Mozart, but he left before graduating.

He worked as a classical pianist, and served as a music director at the Pheasant Run Theater in St Charles, Illinois. He also composed original music for a production of Antigone at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

Hayes moved to Los Angeles in 1995, where he found work as a stand-up comedian, stage actor and as an actor in television commercials.

As a teenager, Hayes was an extra in Winona Ryder's first movie, Lucas (1986), which was filmed at his high school. He made his professional film debut in the independent film Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998), which brought him wide attention and caught the attention of executives who cast him in the NBC comedy television series Will & Grace, as Jack McFarland, a flamboyantly gay, frequently unemployed actor. The show became a long-running hit and Hayes’s performance as Jack earned him seven consecutive Emmy Award nominations (2000–06) as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He won the Emmy for his first nomination. He has been nominated for six Golden Globe Award for his performance.

Hayes’s success led to film appearances in Cats & Dogs (2001), as Jerry Lewis in the made-for-TV movie Martin and Lewis (2002), Pieces of April (2003), The Cat in the Hat (2003) and Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! (2004). He has also guest starred in several television programmes, including Scrubs and 30 Rock.

In 2007, Hayes was featured in a major role as Matthew, also called Thomas, in Rob Reiner's film The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. On July 5, 2008, Hayes made his New York stage debut as Mr Applegate/Devil in New York City Center's Encores! production of Damn Yankees opposite Jane Krakowski and Cheyenne Jackson.

In a 2008 New York Times interview, Hayes revealed that he is working on a television project called BiCoastal about 'a guy with a wife and kids in California and a boyfriend in New York'.

Hayes was cast and will make his Broadway debut alongside Kristin Chenoweth in a spring 2010 Broadway revival of the musical Promises, Promises.

Hayes has played gay and straight characters during his time as an actor, and will be playing a bisexual character in the upcoming BiCoastal, but he had long refused to discuss his sexual orientation in public until he finally revealed he was gay in an interview for The Advocate magazine in March 2010. Answering the charge he had skirted the issue of his sexuality for too long, Hayes was reported as saying, 'I feel like I’ve contributed monumentally to the success of the gay movement in America, and if anyone wants to argue that, I’m open to it.'

Whilst no one thought that Sean Hayes wasn't gay, his refusal to discuss the issue whilst playing a mainstream TV role that to many seemed to perpetuate negative gay sterotypes as much as it brought gay characters into the mainstream was often seen as annoying and disappointing.