The Many Hats of Chris Colfer

Chris Colfer learned as much at the ripe age of 18, when he was cast as the plucky gay countertenor Kurt Hummel on “Glee.” Armed with a golden voice and an uncanny ability to cry on cue (his secret: think of eye injuries), Mr. Colfer became a poster boy for bullying issues and the show’s breakout star.

But back in his hometown, Clovis, Calif., things got weird.

“People that I went to school with almost acted as if I had died,” Mr. Colfer, now 22, said in a recent interview at the Trump SoHo hotel. Classmates who once treated him like toxic waste were now bragging on Facebook that they had been best of friends. “I thought, Wow, this must be what someone feels like at their eulogy.”

That old Tom Sawyer fantasy is the basis of “Struck by Lightning,” a film that Mr. Colfer wrote and stars in. After having its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, it was released on video on demand last week and opens in theaters Jan. 11.

Mr. Colfer plays Carson Phillips, a high-school outcast who, in the hope of getting into Northwestern University, blackmails classmates into contributing to his literary magazine. The film is told in flashback: in the first scene, Carson is, indeed, struck by lightning and dies.

Mr. Colfer conceived the story when he was 16, well before landing on TV. He first performed it in high school, as a monologue for his speech and debate team.

But the movie isn’t just deferred juvenilia. It’s part of Mr. Colfer’s bid to become a multi-platform showbiz hyphenate. In 2011, he signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown. The first book, “The Land of Stories,” which came out this summer, is a young-adult adventure novel that upends classic fairy tales, in the manner of Gregory Maguire. (He’s at work on a sequel.) He also published a companion book to “Struck by Lightning,” written as Carson’s journal.

Mr. Colfer’s literary ambitions, coupled with his piccolo-voiced demeanor, underscore how unconventional his stardom is. Playing a flamboyantly gay TV character means that Mr. Colfer has faced a nagging interest in his own sexuality, as well as questions about his long-term casting potential.

But on this front, too, he has broken ground. Though Mr. Colfer is reticent about his personal life, he has never denied being gay. In an Entertainment Weekly cover article this summer, “The New Art of Coming Out,” the writer Mark Harris contrasted Mr. Colfer with slightly older gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Zachary Quinto, whose coming-out stories, while tellingly understated, were still news.

“There are more and more actors like Chris Colfer, whose transformation from an unknown 19-year-old to a TV star in 2009 was accomplished without any ‘coming out’ moment at all,” Mr. Harris wrote. “He was simply out, and therefore didn’t have to manage or strategize any revelation once he became famous.”

“I kind of love it,” Mr. Colfer said, after being read the passage. “I really hope that one day it won’t be a thing, and we’ll get past this ridiculous — this really complex line between reality and fiction that always gets blurred. It’s crazy that people don’t let actors work because they’re gay.”

“He didn’t have to do a press conference,” said Jane Lynch, the openly lesbian actress who plays the arch-villainess Sue Sylvester on “Glee.” “It’s implied. And I think that says something about the culture we’re in.”

STILL, it’s possible to see Mr. Colfer’s diversity of creative outlets as a kind of insurance policy. By writing his own material, he can circumvent casting directors and define his screen persona for himself.

In some cases, that means leaving things vague. His “Struck by Lightning” character is conspicuously asexual. “I wanted everyone to universally be able to be inspired by this character, so I didn’t address it,” he explained. (In the book version, the subject is acknowledged, if inconclusively: Carson confesses to having a crush on Rachel Maddow.)

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