Why Torchwood star and talent show judge John Barrowman would do anything for success

What drives Barrowman? Or more to the point: who is he? For although he crops up everywhere, not that much is known about him.

"I like to keep busy," he says, which is a bit of an understatement. "So long as people want to see me, I'm there. I don't believe in hiding away.

"You can be in the public eye all the time and still have a private life, but the important thing is to keep in touch with the people who put you there."

Many would say that Barrowman, outwardly confident to the point of sometimes seeming arrogant, is being ingenuous here.

Someone who has known him for most of his professional career claims the force behind his rise to fame is deep uncertainty.

"He is very success-orientated. Not because he's greedy, but because, like most showbusiness stars, he knows that one day the applause will die and the fans will turn their adulation to someone else.

"He's always been fantastically ambitious. When he's had disappointments he has taken them very hard.

"There was the time, as a young man, that he starred in a musical in Los Angeles. He hoped that it would be his big break - but the show flopped.

"That was a severe blow to his ego. Ever since he has held the view that he should grab everything while he can because it may not last. He is genuinely grateful to the people who put him there."

Others close to him, however, believe his background - growing up as a closet homosexual in America's less-than-enlightened Mid-West - etched a permanent chip on his shoulder which he now tries to overcome by defiantly thrusting himself into the limelight as if to say: "I am what I am - take me or leave me!"

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But Barrowman himself says that, at the age of 41, he is finally comfortable with who he is.

"It's taken me 30 years to get this way, and I don't intend to let go. I work hard, but I play hard, too, and that's the one part of me that nobody sees. But I intend to be around for a long time yet."


Привет, бизнесмен - Барроумен!!!!!!!!!!

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He has been with his partner, architect Scott Gill, for 13 years, and seems to have applied the same 'work-bloody-hard-at-it' mentality to his relationship.

'It isn't at all easy and we have had our rocky times,' he says. 'In a way, it is good that I travel a lot because I do have moments when I think, "I need my space now." Scott is the same.'