82-year-old stage and screen actor Joel Grey has revealed to the world that he is gay. 

The Tony and Oscar award-winning actor (for his iconic role as the Emcee in Cabaret) revealed the truth about his sexuality in an interview with People magazine:  

"I don't like labels," says Grey, "but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man." 

While it's not a secret to his friends and family, the entertainer's never spoken about it publicly before. "All the people close to me have known for years who I am," Grey tells PEOPLE. "[Yet] it took time to embrace that other part of who I always was." 

It was different for a man of his generation. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of noted actor-comedian Mickey Katz, Grey remembers "hearing the grownups talk in the next room, my mother included, talking derisively about 'fairies' and men being dragged off to jail and even worse for being who they were." 

At about the same time, he says, "I came to realize, along with being attracted to girls, I had similar feelings for boys." 

Grey didn't reveal his truth for many more years to come. 

He was married to actress Jo Wilder for 24 years, a period he calls "the happiest of my life." Together they have two children: actress Jennifer Grey and son James, a chef. 

Grey's daughter, actress and plastic surgery survivor Jennifer, told People that she is "very happy" that her father "has come to a point in his life where he feels safe and comfortable enough to declare himself in a public way as a gay man."