Profile: Clive Barker

AGE: 43. OCCUPATION: Best-selling horror novelist, writer-director of fright flicks (Hellraiser, Lord of Illusions) CAME OUT: This spring, in three gay magazines. ”It just seems like a good time to stand up and be counted,” he says. ”It’s important that as many well-known gay men [as possible] say, ‘Yes, I’m gay.’ It doesn’t turn me into someone who’s going to molest your children, folks. It’s just an expression of my nature, and you should stop making a big drama of it.” CAREER IMPACT: ”I don’t think it mattered to anybody, truly,” he says.