Some movies entertain you for two hours, and some reach into your ribcage and rearrange the furniture, and for Jonathan Bailey that movie was Brokeback Mountain.
In a new chat around his striking Esquire UK feature, the Bridgerton and Wicked star says the Oscar winner didn’t just move him, it “completely activated” him as a teen in Oxford.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s forbidden romance wasn’t background noise for Bailey, it was a neon sign pointing to a truth he was ready to name.
He was so shaken in the best way that he switched his school project midstream to study “the representation of homosexuality in film,” because sometimes the heart writes the syllabus.
Bailey describes that awakening as the moment he realized love on screen could mirror love in real life with tenderness instead of tragedy, and whew did that mirror reflect possibility.
Fast forward to now and he’s not only one of Britain’s busiest leading men, he’s also PEOPLE’s first openly gay Sexiest Man Alive, which feels like progress wearing a perfectly tailored suit.
In the Esquire UK profile he talks candidly about shame, pride, and the power of showing up exactly as you are, and you can feel the liberation vibrating off the page.
He also spotlights The Shameless Fund, the charitable initiative he launched to channel stardom into concrete support for LGBTQ+ causes, because pretty pictures hit harder when they come with purpose.
The photos are spectacularly theatrical with cravats, coats, and smolder for days, but the message underneath is beautifully simple, and it is that visibility is a gift we pass forward.
Bailey admits he once worried openness might limit his opportunities, yet choosing visibility cracked doors that hiding never could, and that testimony matters to the next kid in a cinema seat.
It is no coincidence that the actor who fell in love with Ennis and Jack’s story now picks projects where queer people are complex and central and not just a wink at the edge of the frame.
He knows the triangle of privilege exists and he says it out loud, and then he does the work to widen the circle anyway, which is the assignment and the extra credit.
There is also a gentle honesty about timing and family and what the future might look like, and it reads like a man building a life with intention instead of performance.
If Brokeback Mountain was the spark, then this era feels like the bonfire where everyone is invited to warm their hands.
The takeaway for us is deliciously clear, and it is that stories save lives when they are told with care and seen without apology.
So yes, swoon over the pictures because we certainly did, but stay for the testimony because that is the part that lingers when the magazine closes.
Somewhere a teenager is watching a love story and feeling the floor shift under their feet, and Jonathan Bailey is proof that the quake can become a compass.
From Oxford cinema aisles to global red carpets, the boy who was “activated” grew into a man who activates others, and that is what star power looks like when it’s used well.
More of this energy please, more of this courage, and more of these beautifully messy, gorgeously human queer coming-of-age chapters on and off screen.
Because representation is not a trend, darling, it is a love letter that keeps getting delivered, and today Jonathan Bailey signed his name in bold ink.