RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Austin Stowell: Square-jawed romantic lead flirts with Liberace, has two quirky best buddies, gets it up on screen. There are backsides, too.

I don't usually profile tall, square-jawed romantic leads -- I'm always drawn to his cute, quirky best friend instead. But Austin Stowell has displayed his cock, fully erect, not a prosthetic, on screen in an American tv series. Do you know how rare that is? So we'll at least have a look.

Austin's personal website gives us a detailed biography: theatrical interest at a young age, BFA from the University of Connecticut in 2007, performed in Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and It Can't Happen Here.

He made his tv debut in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2009-2011). The first season secrets involve a 15-year old girl being torn between her boyfriend and the band camp hookup (Daren Kagasoff) who got her pregnant.

In the second season, a girl sleeps with her boyfriend on the same night that her father is killed in a plane crash. See what happens when you don't practice abstinence? Not to mention going to hell. Yes, it's that kind of show.

Also, Brando Eaton (left) plays a gay teenager. who tells his boyfriend that he is not ready for sex, and survives.

Austin's Jesse wants to stay abstinent, too. When his girlfriend tries to push him into the bedroom, he dumps her, but ends up in the bedroom with another girl, so he's going to hell anyway.

Who's your quirky best friend?

Liam Hemsworth, from Love and Honor (2013): Vietnam soldier Austin gets dumped by his girlfriend back home, so he and his bff Liam go AWOL to win her back. Gulp, then the buddy falls in love with her! Next time get a quirkier buddy.

That's better.

After losing his girlfriend to Liam Hemsworth, Austin had a gay role. Beyond the Candelabra (2013) stars Michael Douglas as the flamboyant 1950s performer Liberace, who sued anyone who implied that he might be gay. Matt Damon plays his...um... you know. Austin appeared briefly as a "backstage flirt."

Left: What Austin flirts with.

And a potentially gay role in Whiplash (2014): Miles Teller plays as aspiring drummer (with a girlfriend) who runs afoul of a sadistic music teacher. Austin plays a competing drummer who doesn't have a girlfriend.

I figured that Battle of the Sexes (2017) would feature Austin as a square-jawed romantic lead, but it's actually about the famous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King (who was a lesbian) and Bobby Riggs. Several gay and bi actors are in the cast, producing some additional gay representation. Austin plays sleaze radio show host Larry King.

More after the break, including that photo.

Catch-22 (2019) is a tv mini-series based on the classic, incomprehensible novel by Joseph Heller. Austin plays Nately, who starts a romance with a prostitute, but is killed before they can marry. He seems to be tied up in this shot.

I stand corrected. Austin does very few square-jawed romantic lead movies. The only one I could find is The Hating Game (2021), with male and female rivals fall in love. Otherwise he plays killers, the subject of sinister scientific experiments, the husbands of lost or sick women, and the victim of the rampaging demon Mammon.

Austin's most recent project is NCIS: Origins (2024-26), a prequel to the 23-season long NCIS, featuring Mark Harmon as navy crime investigator Jethro Gibbs. Austin plays the newly-minted special agent in the long-ago year 1991. Quirky Buddy #2, above, is the team's golden boy, special agent Randy Randolph (Caleb Foote). They both get girlfriends. In fact, Austin ends the first season with an elopement.

Oh, right, the frontal shot. It's from the tv series Three Women (2023-24): A writer working on a book about sex in Middle America interviews...um...three women. One of them, Lina, had a relationship with Aidan (Reilly Walters) in high school. In middle age, she feels neglected by her husband, so she reconnects and starts an affair with him (now played by Austin). Feeling neglected by her husband, she reconnects and starts an affair with him, but he won't leave his wife.