Danny Pintauro - Tenn People Dec'99

Dan's the boss: "I'm a normal guy, just out of college and exploring options."

Former Who's the Boss? star Dan Pintauro was studying in this dorm at Stanford University in 1997 when he got the call. "It was the National Enquirer announcing that they were outing me, whether I agreed to cooperate or not," says Dan, 23. The tabloid had caught him off guard; he'd been out of the spotlight for five years since ending his run as Jonathan on the ABC sitcom. "I didn't know what to do at first. I was shocked. Then I sat down for a few minutes and said, 'You know what? I knew this was coming.'" Following the advice of his former TV mom, Judith Light, Dan spoke up. "I really didn't have anything to hide or be ashamed of," he says. "So I talked to them, and when [the story] came out, it was actually really well done and heartfelt." Dan already had admitted the truth to himself a year earlier. "I had come back to Stanford after a summer of romance with a girl in Los Angeles," he says. Noting his latent interest in the same sex, he began hanging out with a group of bisexuals and calling himself one. "'Bisexual' was a safer term," he says, "but by Christmas break I was secure enough with the issue and myself to tell my parents [I was gay]. They weren't pleased, but they're great now. Everyone realizes they still love each other and nobody has changed" His career hasn't suffered either, "I've yet to encounter dead spaces in auditioning for roles beacause I'm gay," says Dan, who graduated from Stanford in 1998 and has since appeared off-Broadway. "Sexuallity is only one of a hundred issues when it comes to this business. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hinders, just like everything else." -- Reported by Sona Charaiporta