LGBTQ+ Celebrities
TV Shows
Movies
Literature
Video Games
100
This prominent musician from the 1970s and 80s defined himself as bisexual and spent the last several years of his life with his boyfriend and many cats.
Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara)
100
This popular reality TV show involves the art of using clothing and makeup to exaggerate and celebrate traditionally feminine features. Contestants, most of them LGBTQ+ men, must lip sync, sew, and dance to win the competition.
RuPaul's Drag Race
100
This beloved early 2000s high school film has been criticized for its stereotyping portrayal of a gay teenage boy, but was also one of the first places where many Generation Z youth got to see a gay character who was not shown as a villain.
Mean Girls
100
This short story, which was adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and River Phoenix, tells a tragic tale of gay love and homophobia in the 1960s.
Brokeback Mountain
100
This video game features a kiss between its main female character and a girl for whom she has feelings. Its sequel also features a trans male character, who is played by a trans male actor!
The Last of Us
200
This young celebrity is an icon for gay Black men because he was the first openly LGBTQ+ person to win a Country Music Association award and makes waves in the predominantly straight male genres of hip hop and country.
Lil Nas X (Montero Lamar Hill)
200
This Dreamworks/Netflix reboot of a 1980s cartoon has been applauded for its representation of many LGBTQ+ identities, including a lesbian leading couple and a nonbinary character who uses they/them pronouns.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
200
This Oscar-winning film from 2016 received praise for its sensitive and nuanced portrayal of growing up Black and gay in America.
Moonlight
200
This novel, which focuses on the struggles of Black women in the early 1900s, is also known for having a lesbian protagonist. It received a musical adaptation in 2005.
The Color Purple
200
This pink-haired Street Fighter character has often been censored and portrayed differently in different countries’ versions of the games she appears in, but in the U.S., she is depicted as a transgender woman.
Poison
300
These two film and TV directors, known for The Matrix, were once referred to by the public as “the ____ brothers,” then as “the ____ siblings,” and now as “the ____ sisters,” as both have come out as transgender women several years apart from one another.
The Wachowski Sisters
300
This Netflix original series was created by the famous trans women behind The Matrix. The show is known for its ensemble cast of actors from many different countries, inclusion of multiple LGBTQ+ characters, and psychological sci-fi plot.
Sense8
300
This dramady, which released in 2000, is an iconic lesbian film because of its positive depiction of a young woman falling in love and accepting her identity despite being sent to anti-LGBTQ+ “conversion therapy.”
But I'm a Cheerleader
300
This novel is a fictionalization of the life of Lili Elbe, who transitioned from male to female in 1930, making her one of the earliest women known to medically transition. A film starring Eddie Redmayne was made.
The Danish Girl
300
In these zombie apocalypse video games, players have the option to choose either a male or female love interest for the main character, who is bisexual.
The Walking Dead
400
This actress from Orange is the New Black fell in love with the writer of the show and revealed that she was in a relationship with her in 2016.
Samira Wiley
400
This NBC adaptation of a crime novel series by Thomas Harris received praise for depicting complex same-gender relationships while removing the homophobia and transphobia that were present in the books.
Hannibal
400
This movie musical focuses on the life and career of a fictional rock singer who also happens to be a spunky genderqueer person hailing from Cold War East Germany.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
400
This novel by E.M. Forster, which tells a gay male love story, was written circa 1913, but was not published until 1971 due to negative attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people in society.
Maurice
400
This Dragon Age character was the first transgender character to appear in a BioWare game. He is a trans man.
Cremisius Aclassi or "Krem"
500
This young actor is one of the few openly transgender men of color in the public eye, having starred in The OA and The Last of Us: Part II.
Ian Alexander
500
This miniseries from 2020, based on a book of the same name, includes a few LGBTQ+ women, including a black, bisexual mother played by Kerry Washington.
Little Fires Everywhere
500
This 1923 silent film is an adaptation of an Oscar Wilde play and is often called one of the first queer films due to its largely LGBTQ+ cast and its portrayal of drag and gay subtext.
Salomé
500
This novel by Leslie Feinberg explores gender and sexual identity in 1970s America, focusing mainly on lesbian and gender non-conforming identities.
Stone Butch Blues
500
This character from The Outer Worlds is one of the few explicitly asexual, adult human characters in video games today. One of her co-creators is also ace.
Parvati Holcomb