OUT100 Covers Revealed

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIELLE LEVITT

SLIDESHOW: The Out100 Covers

In our yearly portfolio, we capture the year's most entertaining, heroic, and intriguing figures, from all walks of life--including professional athletes, doctors, designers, trans teen activists, emerging musicians, artists, and even three generations of Boy Scouts. Our four collectible covers for the 2013 Out100 are no less inspiring.

Lee Daniels, Artist of the Year

He's already won Oscars for his movies Monster's Ball (which he produced) and Precious, and he says he remains aware that his insecurities are an inseparable part of his talent. That Daniels has found a cinematic language that speaks to black and white audiences is part of what makes him--a black, gay director--unique.

Jim Parsons, Entertainer of the Year

Following the sixth season of the TV series The Big Bang Theory, and coming off his third Emmy win for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for it, Parsons filmed the Ryan Murphy-directed version of The Normal Heart for HBO. "It's been a very different process than doing the play of it, but it's been similar in the camaraderie you immediately feel."

Wentworth Miller, Newsmaker of the Year

Best known to millions of Americans for his role as Michael Scofield in the hit series Prison Break, Miller has since transitioned from acting to writing. Coming out earlier this year, he took another courageous step when he opened up about his suicide attempts as a teenager, concluding with a powerful statement of intent: "Let me be to someone else what no one was to me. Let me send a message to that kid, maybe in America, maybe someplace far overseas, maybe somewhere deep inside -- a kid who is being targeted at home or at school or in the streets -- that someone is watching and listening and caring, that there is an 'us,' that there is a 'we,' and that kid or teenager or adult is loved and they are not alone."

Edie Windsor, Lifetime Achievement

When the 5-4 Supreme Court decision ruling the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional was announced on June 26 this year, Windsor was at the apartment of her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, to receive a congratulatory phone call from President Obama. And then she went to the Stonewall Inn to celebrate. This time, in contrast to 1969, the whole city was there to join the celebration--a testament to the distance we've traveled. "The next generation is so far advanced over us," Windsor says. "I love that a lot of younger people now come out that would never have come out in the old days. Of course, they are born into a community already. They just have to discover it, whereas we were still building it."

Visit the Out100 2013 hub page for a complete list of this year's honorees.
SLIDESHOW: See the Complete Out100 List