Bob Paris (born Robert Clark Paris on December 14, 1959) is a writer, actor, public speaker, civil rights activist and former professional bodybuilder. Paris was the 1983 NPC American National and IFBB World Bodybuilding Champion, Mr. Universe.
Paris grew up in Southern Indiana. He played high school football and participated in track and field events. There, Paris first began lifting weights, leading him down the road to professional bodybuilding.
Career
In 2006, Flex Magazine ranked Bob Paris the most aesthetic athlete in the history of bodybuilding. Renowned for both his aesthetics and artistic approach toward the sport, he was also a dedicated advocate for the rights of athletes and an outspoken voice in the push for drug testing at the professional level. He retired from bodybuilding in 1991.
In addition to his writing career, Bob Paris remains a civil rights advocate and motivational speaker. He is also a model and a classically trained theatre actor. Since rising to fame in the early eighties, Bob Paris has graced the covers of scores of magazines worldwide.
On October 10, 1998, he made his New York stage debut, starring at Carnegie Hall opposite Bea Arthur, Sandy Duncan, Michael Jeter, Philip Bosco, Alice Ripley and Tyne Daly in the Broadway musical, Jubilee as the character Mowgli.
In 2009, he performed in a recurring role on the first season of the ABC Television series, Defying Gravity.
In the July 1989 issue of Ironman, Paris came out in the media as a gay man.
He and his then-partner, Rod Jackson, had a commitment ceremony in a Unitarian church in 1989, started successful non-profit companies, lectured on a wide variety of LGBT rights issues, and made many television, radio, newspaper and magazine appearances. In 1995, the two separated.
Today, Paris lives with his partner, Brian, on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia. Together since 1996, Bob and Brian were legally "married" after Canada equalized the marriage laws in 2003.