Jeff Hiller’s new memoir is a love letter to late bloomers and those who were bullied

Jeff Hiller’s career has always defied easy labels. He’s a queer comic with a tender soul and a biting sense of humor. He’s also one helluva writer!

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We all know Hiller for his breakout role in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, playing Joel. Hiller portrays Joel as an empathetic, churchgoing gay man in small-town Kansas. But behind that “overnight” visibility is a story decades in the making, one he’s finally told in his debut memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success.

In an interview with The Advocate, Hiller describes the book as “a gift” to his younger self. “I wrote it to say to that little gay kid in Texas who was bullied and told he was weird or too much or too soft, ‘Hey, you didn’t deserve that.’”

With his warmth and wit, Hiller’s memoir maps out a winding journey through evangelical churches, improv stages, social work offices, and off-off-Broadway basements. Its chapters are a collage of the solo shows he’s performed over the years, repurposed and recontextualized into a single heartfelt narrative.

At first, Hiller says, he thought about turning those shows into stand-up specials. “But then I realized, why not just combine them all into a book? I already had years of polished material including stories that had been honed by trial and error in front of audiences. Because I performed them so many times, I knew where the laugh lines were. And I knew what wording worked, what didn’t. It helped me shape the voice of the book.”

But Actress of a Certain Age is more than just Hiller’s greatest hits. He also wrote new material, about his early years in Texas and his unexpected career in social work. Revisiting those memories proved unexpectedly cathartic for him. “I know it sounds like therapy-speak,” he admits. “But it really did help me find compassion for my younger self. For so long, I just accepted the bullying as inevitable, like, of course that happened, I was so gay-acting. But writing the book let me step outside of that and say, ‘Wait. That shouldn’t have happened to any kid.’”

The title of the book is a not-so-subtle nod to the entertainment industry’s ageism. “It’s such a dismissive phrase, right? ‘Actress of a certain age.’ I’ve always found it both ridiculous and endearing,” he says. “Nobody says ‘doctoress’ or ‘pilotress.’ So calling myself that is my way of poking fun at that hypocrisy. Plus I’ve had it as my Instagram bio forever, so I figured, why not own it?”

There’s a thread of resilience throughout the book as it pertains to his refusal to never give up. “The book is really about what it means to keep going even when the world tells you not to,” Hiller points out. “To have a dream and to be an actor or a performer or whatever and to still believe in that dream when people call it stupid or naive? That’s hard. But it’s also beautiful.”

That message resonated with fans of Somebody Somewhere, which offered Hiller his biggest platform yet. The show’s gentle tone and generous spirit allowed him to show dimensions of a queer life rarely depicted on-screen.

Hiller's Joel was lonely, joyful, spiritual, funny, and so ordinary and mundane. “It mirrored my life,” he reflects. “The show said, ‘You are valid.’ It told people, especially queer people in overlooked places, that they matter.”

And now, with Actress of a Certain Age, he’s extending that message beyond the screen and the stage. “There are still bullies out there, on the schoolyard, in state houses, in the White House,” Hiller explains. “But part of growing up is learning that just because they’re louder doesn’t mean they’re right.”

Writing the book, he says, gave him a sense of peace he didn’t expect. “It helped me understand that I wasn’t just performing for applause. I was also performing to connect, to heal, to say, ‘You’re not alone.’ And honestly? I needed to hear that too.”

Hiller, who will turn the ripe young age of 50 this year, appreciates every part of his journey. “I just want people to know that their dreams matter,” he says. “Even if they come true a little later than you thought.”