James Lecesne
James Lecesne (born November 24, 1954) is an American actor and writer. Lecesne won an Academy Award for the short film Trevor in 1995, which he had adapted into a screenplay based on a character from his one-man show Word of Mouth. Also in 1995, Word of Mouth won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. In 1998, on the night Ellen DeGeneres hosted the television debut of Trevor on HBO, Lecesne co-founded and launched The Trevor Project as the first nationwide 24-hour crisis intervention lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth, including phone, in-person and online life-affirming resources such as Trevor Lifeline, TrevorChat, TrevorSpace, Ask Trevor and Trevor Education Workshops. In 2008, the HarperCollins imprint HarperTeen published Lecesnes's novel Absolute Brightness, the story of "a luminous force of nature, a boy named Leonard Pelkey, who encounters evil and whose magic isn't truly felt until he disappears." Lecesne, an off-Broadway veteran, made his Broadway debut in 2012 performing the role of Dick Jensen in Gore Vidal's political drama The Best Man, which also starred James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Cybill Shepherd, and Eric McCormack. Lecense practices Nichiren Buddhism and is a member of the international Buddhist association Soka Gakkai. As part of his spiritual practice, Lecesne has stated that he recites the Buddhist chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo each day.