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heres a
reprint from the interview by RONALD MARK KRAFT
He's No Angel
Actor-slash-model Tony Ward has a bad
reputation.
Does he deserve
it? Does he ever!
Dressed in baggy jeans and a tight Adidas
shirt, actor-model
Tony Ward sits spread-legged at a bus stop on tawdry Santa Monica Boulevard. Ward lifts his
head, peering over
his baseball-style cap (which reads - both ymbolically and cryptically -
"Spanish Fly") to challenge the blistering
sun with his piercing brown eyes.
It's hard not to notice that the dusty light on this hot summer day has a
strange and delirious effect. From a distance it makes the haggard hustlers who frequent this area of Hollywood look 18, though up
close it reveals every hard minute of every mean day they have
lived. But Ward is lit by his own light; a young-looking 33, he
meets all the eyes behind the wheels of the cars that slow to check him out.
Today, however, Ward's not hustling johns in real
life, he's talking about playing a hustler in Rick Castro's and Bruce LaBruce's Hustler White.
For Ward there is a strange irony in that his first movie cast him in a part he practiced in real life at the onset of his modeling
career. "Let's just say the role of a hustler wasn't new to
me," says Ward,
pulling on a Marlboro and smiling puckishly. "I started out in a pretty scandalous way."
Regardless of where he's been and how he got there, the path ahead will not be an easy
one. The road to movie
stardom is littered with the wreckage of models,
super and otherwise, who have tried to parlay one career into the
other. Caught in the kind of transitional moment that makes the most confident individual
sweat, Ward is cool. The fact is, the rough-trade handsome man who walked the
runways for Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, and whose face graced the pages of high-end fashion magazines
clowning with Linda Evangelista for Dolce & Gabbana, won't be taking no for an
answer.
"Always knew I could act from the second I saw Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentlemen doing those sit-ups and yelling and
grunting. I was like, I know I can do that,"Ward says,
pausing. " am an animated person, not a
clothes rack."
Indeed, when Ward speaks his hands move double-time to his
words. Often his
gestures take on a familiar "street" affectation - hands
cupped, stiffly held arms bending only at the elbows. Equal parts gangster and
gangsta, this
is either a nod to his roots or to where he'd like his roots to have
been.
The middle of three boys raised in a broken home in San Jose,
California,
Ward first burst into the national consciousness in the Madonna video
"Justify My Love,"
and then into the tabloid press as her latest bad-boy boy
toy.
While Ward and Madonna are no longer together, they remain
close.
"Once you love
someone, they are always in your heart," Madonna says.
"We
will always be good friends." And as a friend, what advice would the singer-actress
give Mr. Ward about acting? Stardom? Life? "I've already given him enough
advice!" she says dryly.
But even before Madonna, many gay men already knew Ward from a series of
graphic photos published under the nom de porn "Franco
Kier" for Colt Studios. Later, other gay men came to know him by his real name from the
stunning nudes that appeared in the early books of photographers Bruce Weber
and Herb Ritts. From there a high-profile career as a fashion model seemed all but
inevitable.
According to famed fashion photographer Steven Meisel, the reason is simple.
"Tony is great! He has a really good feel for the camera," says the visual artist
who shot last year's infamous "underage" campaign for Calvin Klein. As for Ward's
appeal, Meisel adds this: "It's in the way he holds
himself. He's
very secure with his own body and he's got very special
eyes. Plus Tony has a fearless, vibrant energy that projects right onto the film."
One of the things that is unique about Ward is that he is as proud of his work in the buff as he is of his work in French
cuffs. Another is that it
thrills him that his profile in the gay community exceeds his profile
elsewhere. Perhaps
the reason for both of these facts can be found in his uncensored candor about the
following: While never without a girlfriend, he has had not only
exciting sexual relationships with men, but meaningful emotional ones as
well.
Just don't call him homosexual. Or heterosexual. Or bisexual. In a confusing yet modern take on
sexuality, Ward refuses to be limited by society's need to
categorize. "I do what I want, with who I want, when I
want," he says.
Here then, gentlemen and gentlemen, is Mr. Tony Ward himself - stripped down
and sexy. Let's hear it for the man.
© Genre
Magazin
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