Chad Allen took a bite out of the showbiz world at age 4 in a McDonald’s commercial. His first big acting gig was on “St. Elsewhere” at age 8, where he played an autistic boy. What followed next was a series with Deidre Hall and Shannen Doherty entitled “Our House” and then came the show that launched a million teenage magazine covers for Allen, “My Two Dads.”

He further capitalized on that initial teen feeding frenzy when he began a six-season run as Matthew Cooper on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

In 2001, Allen publicly came out in The Advocate, and rather than see the admission halt his career, he continued adding to his body of work. Fast-forward to 2006, and Allen is reprising his role as Donald Strachey, a no-nonsense, volatile-tempered, gun-toting gay detective. In Shock to the System (playing throughout August on here! TV), Allen’s Strachey takes on a mysterious death tied to the ex-gay movement while juggling the demands of his monogamous relationship.

Today, Allen is just as comfortable behind the scenes with his own production company, Mythgarden. He chatted with the Gay & Lesbian Times about growing up, coming out and moving forward.

Gay & Lesbian Times: How difficult was it to deal with having the adulation of adoring teenage girls and being in the closet at the same time?

Chad Allen: Looking back on it now it’s like the bane of my existence. It’s a weird thing to try to grow up and be a teenager and constantly have your face being plastered everywhere, and have people believe that they knew you. It was very common for me to read the articles of those magazines and think, “I wish I could be like that guy because he sounds like he’s pretty cool.” But it didn’t have anything to do with who I was.

GLT: Your character Donald Strachey in Shock to the System isn’t your typical gay character. Still, is there any fear of typecasting with being an out actor playing a gay character?

CA: I think it’s so funny that people ask me that, even though I have only played one gay character in my entire career [laughs]. I think it’s a concern mostly from a previous era. I don’t think for the most part, realistically, anybody would be concerned about that anymore.

I just starred in a major feature film [End of the Spear] that premiered around the country, where I played a real-life Christian missionary. Nobody asked me if I was afraid of being stereotyped as a Christian missionary [laughs]. So no, it’s not a concern of mine. I understand why the question gets asked. But is it something I worry about? I would be perfectly happy to play gay characters for the rest of my career, if that’s the way it was.

GLT: Aside from acting, you have a production company – what avenues are you hoping to explore with the material you take on?

CA: Our goal is to really turn the page on what’s been done before, and make some quality films, and tell some great stories. We just wrapped production on the feature Save Me, we’ve got a handful of productions that are in the pipeline, and some of them are dramas and some of them are just a lot of fun; great epic genre stories that happen to have gay characters. It’s really an exciting time to be doing what we’re doing.

GLT: How has your personal and professional life changed in the years since you have publicly come out?

CA: I’m certainly a heck of a lot more busy than I was before! I think it’s because I spend an enormous amount of time doing social justice work, work with the civil rights movement, a lot of speaking, leading marches like we just did in Colorado on the Focus on the Family compound. I love all that. Certainly, as a result of my coming out, one of the manifestations of that has been the company and that keeps me much busier than I used to be, and squeezing in acting work in the meantime.

It’s a lot more fun, I certainly don’t have a lot of the same fears that I used to wander around with. I absolutely love my life.

I encourage everybody that comes to me asking about coming out or not to go ahead and do it. It’s an enormous weight lifted off your shoulders when you’re living – sort of hiding in the shadows, worrying about what someone’s going to hold over your head. It’s been a terrific experience; I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Morgan Fairchild has made a career out of playing strong-willed blonde vixens who aren’t afraid to go after what they want. The Texas-born beauty was a perfect fit for nighttime soaps such as “Dallas,” where she originated the role of Jenna Wade, which would later be played by Priscilla Presley. Or the show that catapulted her to fame, “Flamingo Road,” in which she played the quadruple threat Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle. On “Paper Dolls,” she starred as Racine alongside a pre-“Desperate Housewives” Nicolette Sheridan and then went toe to toe with the other vineyard denizens of “Falcon Crest.”

Fairchild has proved just as potent on the flipside of drama, landing comedic spots on “Happy Days,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Murphy Brown,” “Roseanne” and “Friends.”

Off camera, Fairchild has fought for AIDS awareness, which makes her latest role as a homophobic mother named Mrs. Hale in Shock to the System the complete antithesis to who she really is.

But this is par for the course for Fairchild, who describes herself as a “puppy dog from Texas.” Up next is her return to the movie that introduced America to her bitchy side, a remake of “The Initiation of Sarah,” which is set to air on ABC Family around Halloween.

Fairchild, who is filming the tele-novella “Fashion House” here in San Diego, spoke with the Gay & Lesbian Times about her reel life versus her real life.

Gay & Lesbian Times: What aspect of playing “the bad girl” do you find most appealing?

Morgan Fairchild: Well, they’re the most fun, aren’t they? [Laughs] They’re always the most fun! I always thought I’d be stereotyped playing ingénues my whole life because of the way I look. And then once I got cast as one kind of bitch, I just seemed to be doing it the rest of my life. I like to play other things too. It should be noted that she likes to play other things too [laughs].

GLT: Of all the television shows you have done, what moment stands out the most for you?

MF: With “Paper Dolls” I felt like it all kind of clicked, and it was fun for me. Of all of the series I did, “Paper Dolls” was my favorite. I loved Racine.

We had hysterical moments. One moment I remember, we were shooting over at MGM in The Wizard of Oz soundstage – so it’s the biggest soundstage in Hollywood – and they had built this elaborate apartment set for me, which was really fabulous. And I had my own Jacuzzi in my bedroom in this apartment, and Dack Rambo and I had this hot love scene in this Jacuzzi one day. And I guess they thought maybe it was too clear, and you were going to see a little too much. So they put some bubbles in, only they overdid it, and they flooded the whole soundstage full of bubbles! [Laughs]

GLT: How was it playing Sandra Bernhard’s girlfriend on “Roseanne?”

MF: It was a lot of fun. When they called me about that, I thought it would be very challenging, because this was in ’92 when the whole gay and lesbian thing was not as hot a topic as it is now. It was quite groundbreaking at that time, and they build up through this whole episode that Sandra has a new girlfriend. And I figured the last person in the world America’s going to expect to walk through that door was Morgan Fairchild. So I thought it would be a hoot, and it would put a familiar face on a controversial issue that could get people talking and get a debate opened.

GLT: You are very pro-gay in real life. How was it to slip into the skin of Mrs. Hale in Shock to the System?

MF: That’s one reason I was kind of interested to play Mrs. Hale, is because it was so different than what I am in real life. And that in itself made it a challenge to try to get into the skin of someone who is just so homophobic and cannot accept the fact that her son is gay. To me, she was a very complicated character and difficult and tragic. Because of that, I thought she was a very interesting character [and] it would be interesting for me to play that kind of character. She’s similar [to other characters I have played] in that she is kind of rich and snooty, but dissimilar in that she’s not a vixen. She’s sort of this repressed and old-money kind of thing.

GLT: What do you think is the most common misperception people have about you as a person?

MF: I do seem to surprise people that I have a brain, so I’ve always had that advantage. I have a Mensa IQ. Because of the way I look, if I can walk and chew gum at the same time, they’re impressed. So, it’s rather easy to impress them [laughs]. And when they find out you can actually pronounce a few $10 words, then they’re really impressed. I guess some people actually think that I am a bitch, and I’m actually not. You’d have to push me pretty hard to get me to go there.