He walks the mile.

Michael Jeter's turn alongside Tom Hanks in The Green Mile is stirring Oscar talk, but he says his mission is to win over homophobic minds

In the film adaptation of Stephen King's death-row drama, The Green Mile, Michael Jeter plays a mouse-loving inmate sharing the block with an accused murderer (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) who performs miracles. Jeter's experience with the critically acclaimed film has provided him with some fairly miraculous moments off-screen as well. At a Nashville showing of Mile in December, for instance, Jeter's conservative parents--who are both in their 70s and celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary--finally met Sean Blue, Jeter's husband of four years. "It was the first time my mother and father met a partner of mine," says a still-bewildered Jeter. "It's really quite momentous in my life."

Jeter is more nonchalant about the raves he's been getting for Mile. The Washington Times has called his performance "brilliant," and even crew members were moved by his work in the movie ("It's a hell of an indication of how good someone is when you see some big, hairy grip wiping his eyes after you cut," says the film's writer-director, Frank Darabont). But Jeter shrugs. "Buzz is almost like oxygen in this town," he quips. "If there was no buzz, I think people would just drop dead." Another shrug. "I know what it's like to be in the media spotlight, and I also know what it's like for it to suddenly disappear," states the 47-year-old, who has made a career out of playing character parts well. He won a Tony award in 1990 for his performance as a dying man in Grand Hotel and an Emmy in 1992 for his portrayal of wimpy assistant coach Herman Stiles on the hit `90s Burt Reynolds sitcom Evening Shade. "I have no delusions about my place on the market shelf," he says. "I know nobody's going to cast me or come to see me because they have fantasies of fucking me."

Not that his character-actor status has affected his enthusiasm for his craft, suggests friend Jane Krakowski, who plays Elaine on Ally McBeal and starred with Jeter in Grand Hotel. "The minute the overture started, he was in character," she marvels, "and he never broke it until the curtain call."

Jeter has brought the same intensity to his role in life. Growing up with five siblings in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., he always knew he was gay, he says. "When I played, the fantasy wasn't about the princess," he says with a laugh. "If I kissed the frog, I wanted it to become a prince too." But being different, Jeter says, wasn't something his family would embrace, so he bolted from home as soon as he could. "I knew instinctually that I had to get out of there if I was ever going to understand what [my] difference was and get comfortable with it," he explains. He escaped to study premed at Memphis State University before stumbling onto the school's theater department: "I never wanted to leave."

Though Jeter takes acting seriously, Krakowski says he knows how to have fun with an audience. During their stay at Grand Hotel, she remembers, "We used to tease each other when we'd see a cute boy in the audience. We'd try to figure out if the boy was looking at him or me."

While Blue is the only boy in his room these days, the relationship almost didn't survive after the two discovered four months into dating that Jeter is HIV-positive. "I desperately wanted him to go away," Jeter recalls. "I knew I would never be able to forgive myself if I infected him. But he wouldn't go away." Instead, the pair learned to make adjustments in the bedroom. "We found out people can be safe and have a very good time," says a smiling Jeter, who recently celebrated three years of having an undetectable viral load.

In 1997 the already openly gay Jeter went public about his infection while hosting a symposium on AIDS, HIV, and television. Stunned that no one on the panel was openly gay or HIV-positive, Jeter pointedly held up a pillbox filled with his medication: "I said, `This is my friend. This reminds me that my life will never be the same. And on behalf of all the people out there who have little friends, thank you for being here.'" Even he was surprised by his impulsiveness. "I sat down and thought, Oh, my God, what have I done?" he says.

What Jeter did was put a face on HIV for a world he can still find homophobic and complacent. At movie premieres, he notes with chagrin, "Sean and I go down the red carpet holding hands together, so pictures of us together are very rarely published. And HIV has become the subject that no one wants to talk about anymore. The gay community used to be in the forefront of it all. They just don't care anymore."

Jeter is doing everything he can to see that people do care. A busy actor--he will soon be seen playing a sociopath alongside Paul Reubens in the independent movie South of Heaven, West of Hell--Jeter is often recognized on the street. "People go, `I've seen you in so many things, but I don't know your name,'" he says with a laugh. "I introduce myself. And I introduce Sean. People don't look at us like, `Ooh, faggots.' Instead, they shake hands and say, `It's nice to meet you.'" He smiles. "The most effective way to do anything about the perceived differences between us is to say, `This is the person I love, and we're happy to meet you.' And People are happy to meet us back."

Epstein also contributes to E! Online and Cosmopolitan.