The New Who’s Who of Philly’s Gay Community

When she walked onto a movie set, it was love at first sight. For Pollino, a writer, director and producer of several independent films and TV projects, it’s been a swift road to celluloid. “One day I got a call about a film,” she says. It was Out There, a flick starring indie darling Clea DuVall. A half-dozen or more projects later—including the latest film, Regrets, with her longtime creative collaborator, Peter Patrikios—Pollino is leaving Philly for Hollywood after working for a show on Oprah’s OWN. Over the years, she’s also worked with Judd Nelson (who told her secrets about making The Breakfast Club) and Michael Madsen. “I get chills doing this for a living,” she says, as she gets ready to direct her first feature film this fall.

Patrikios wanted to be a doctor—until he was cast as Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof. “That’s when I really started to feel that I should reconsider med school,” says the actor, a Philly native who’s been in 23 films, TV shows and plays with stars like Uma Thurman, Parker Posey and M. Night Shyamalan. “I love to play characters that are bad, but have a soft center,” admits the actor, who played against type recently as a serial killer. He also never hides the fact that he’s gay. “After I came out, my mom asked me to take her to Woody’s,” he says. “She wanted to meet my friends and get a feel for what my life was like. I would like to impress on young LGBT people that they can be out and proud of who they are.”

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