American actor James Dean was BOTD in 1931. Born and raised in Marion, Indiana, he moved to California after high school to study theatre. After bit parts in films and television commercials, he moved to New York in 1952 where he studied Method Acting. After successful Broadway appearances, including a villainous gay character in The Immoralist, he caught the attention of director Elia Kazan, who cast him in the 1955 film of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. His next film project, Rebel Without a Cause, cast him as sensitive high-school misfit Jim Stark, who becomes the object of desire for co-stars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. “I’m not a homosexual,” Dean told a reporter who asked if he was gay, “but I’m not going through life with one hand tied behind my back.” True to his word, he had a tortured sado-masochistic affair with his hero Marlon Brando, and many transactional encounters with powerful older men who promised him success. His final film Giant, an epic about a corrupt oil-owning family, co-starred his friends Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Shortly after completing filming in 1955, Dean was killed in a car accident on his way to compete in a sports car rally. He was 24. Rebel Without a Cause and Giant were released posthumously, sealing his legend as a Hollywood icon and inspiring an obsessively loyal fanbase. He came to personify the disenchantment of the Baby Boomer generation, creating a Hollywood archetype of the brooding beautiful anti-hero continued by actors Martin Sheen, Luke Perry, Leslie Cheung, Leonardo DiCaprio and especially James Franco (who played Dean in a 2001 TV biopic). The homoerotic charge of his screen performances and the persistent rumours of his sexuality have made him an enduring queer icon.