With 1981’s Clash Of The Titans, it looked like Harry Hamlin was destined for the A-List. However he only had two more cinema roles before getting sucked back into the world of TV movies of the week. It wasn’t until he scored a major role in the TV show LA Law that he saw real success again.

So what happened? Well, according to Harry, it’s that the movie he made directly after Clash, 1982’s Making Love, saw him playing a gay man – and after that the phone stopped ringing.

While appearing on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, Hamlin says of Making Love, “It was way before its time…It was something that I would repeat. I would do it again today, even though there was a ruffle in my career after that, for sure.”

It was an interesting choice for a young actor at the time, as few mainstream actors would ever have accepted a gay role. Indeed, Hamlin says, ‘a lot of people turned it down’, however his agemt through he could get away with it because he was involved in a high-profile relationship with actress Ursula Andress at the time, with whom he had a son, so the thought was that nobody would think he was really gay.

However the result was that he didn’t work in features again. He’s upbeat about it though, saying “What it did is it created a transition for me between feature film to television.”

LA Law made Hamlin a household name and thanks to that role he was voted People’s Sexiest Man Alive. More recently he’s been seen in recurring roles in the likes of Shameless and Mad Men.

Making Love is about a young doctor and his wife, whose relationship is challenged by the arrival of Hamlin’s swinging artist. The Doc can’t deny his attraction to Hamlin, and soon they embark on an affair.