20 of our favore straight actors as gay characters | CNN

Contents:

• 8 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT CHARACTERS
• 15 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT ROL TO PERFECTN
• 20 GREAT ROL: OUR FAVORE STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS
• STANLEY TUCCI: IT’S OK FOR STRAIGHT ACTORS TO PLAY GAY ROL IF DONE ‘THE RIGHT WAY’
• STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS
• GAY ACTORS, STRAIGHT ROL: A LSON IN MAKG SURE YOUR ARGUMENT IS LOGIL
• STANLEY TUCCI SAYS HE THKS STRAIGHT ACTORS SHOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY GAY CHARACTERS
• SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL? A STAR TV WRER SAYS NO
• SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? 'IT'S PLITED'
• LET’S SETTLE THIS: CAN STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL?
• SHOULD GAY ROL BE PLAYED BY GAY ACTORS?

8 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT CHARACTERS

"Roger Ebert wrote: "He plays the role not as a man pretendg to be a woman, and not as a woman trapped a man's body, and not as a parody of a woman, and not as a gay man, but as a drag queen, perd: Lola, a tall, athletic performer thigh-high red boots who l the stage of a drag club as if she were born there, and is a pretty good sger, too. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, were both Osr-nomated for their performanc (Ledger lead, Gyllenhaal supportg) this film about two men fallg love and ntug their affair for film sred 87% on Rotten Tomato, wh the se's cril nsens readg: "A betifully epic Wtern, 'Brokeback Mounta''s gay love story is imbued wh heartbreakg universaly, helped by the movg performanc of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

In 2006, NPH me out sayg that he was “happy to dispel any mors or misnceptns, ” that he is “que proud to say that I am a very ntent gay man livg my life to the fullt and feel most fortunate to be workg wh wonrful people the bs I love. Before g out as gay 2014, his heartwarmg speech livered at the Time to Thrive nference which aims to promote LGBT youth welfare, and later as a transgenr man 2020, Ellt Page was st as the tular role of the edy classic Juno.

15 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT ROL TO PERFECTN

In his acceptance speech, Jonathan Bailey prais the productn for beg “a lovely and celebratory snapshot of gay love” what he scribed as “a time where acknowledgg the very existence of LGBT people our schools is beg qutned. We have some of the most pellg liv, so 's not surprisg that everyone wants to tell our s gotten better recent years, throughout history, most great gay rol have gone to straight actors, wh over a dozen wng Osrs for playg LGBTQ+ characters. Sometim n be tirome seeg straight actors get all of this praise for brgg gay people to life, but other tim s tly are our ten favore performanc by straight actors playg queer characters movi and TV om 2022.

While she spends most of her time at work yellg at men who flirt wh the sk clerk she's cshg on and ly tellg guts that she n't help them, Victoria is secretly holdg a ep secret: she's gay, but has never been wh a woman. She has been gay on Amerin Horror Story: Asylum and Carol however, one of the rol she has was Harriet Hay Stud 60 on The Sunset Strip, a character based on Amerin actrs and sger Krist Chenoweth. Harris nfirmed his sexual orientatn 2006, sayg: "I am happy to dispel any mors or misnceptns and am que proud to say that I am a very ntent gay man livg my life to the fullt and feel most fortunate to be workg wh wonrful people the bs I love.

20 GREAT ROL: OUR FAVORE STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS

While we fely prefer that most gay rol go to gay actors, and we love the thenticy they brg to the rol and the projects they’re , we n’t help but have a special soft spot for a few straight stars, like Brendan Fraser, are great people and great at playg gay, but aren't really known for . We want a future where every talented queer actor n get whatever rol they want and where queer actors fally w awards for playg queer rol, but until then, the ten actors show that not every straight actor should be banned om playg gay on screen. We loved when McGregor played a gay mate Phillip Morris the dark edy I Love You Phillip Morris, and aga when he played real-life legendary fashn signer Halston the Netflix miseri Halston.

From smaller movi like The Daytrippers and Ltle Chaos, to his inic gay rol The Devil Wears Prada, Burlque, and Supernova (oppose fellow straight-actor-we-love Col Firth), he always do the gay muny right. Chalamet hasn’t had as many gay rol as the rt of the people on this list (he’s only 27, after all), but he ma que the imprsn on the queer muny wh his touchg and realistic performance as a lovtck teen Lu Guadagno’s classic g-of-age romance Call Me by Your Name.

STANLEY TUCCI: IT’S OK FOR STRAIGHT ACTORS TO PLAY GAY ROL IF DONE ‘THE RIGHT WAY’

” “It’s important that gay characters are portrayed as well-round and pletely human dividuals, ” add Parsons, who noted that “there are plenty of straight actors who have played gay characters brilliantly. Shows and movi that st queer actors queer rol have been celebrated by fans, cludg Jasm Savoy Brown’s stg as a queer teen on Yellowjackets and as the Scream anchise’s first openly gay character. This go to show that the issue is nuanced and plex: Jt bee a project do st some queer actors queer rol and has a queer person at the helm (Murphy is openly gay), that don’t mean ’s exempt om cricism or there to be staed and staable change, ’s sential to have LGBTQ+ people cisn-makg posns.

Bee of that, she utns speakg absolut about straight people not playg queer rol, which might give journalists license to ask actors if they’re gay and put prsure on someone to e out before they’re ready.

STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS

"All of those issu are important to me at once, and I thk that we n advote for all of them at once bee ultimately we want our media to be an accurate reflectn of the world which we live, " they Billy Eichner, who is gay, told Deadle earlier this year that Hollywood was "so hypocril"  how treats LGBTQ actors, that many attend fundraisers for the muny but fail to tell LGBTQ stori wh LGBTQ actors. "I don't thk that a cis person uld ever tly unrstand the trans experience, or what means to be trans and the amount of opprsn that we go through on a daily basis, " Cassata qutn of thenticy appli to lbian, gay and bisexual people, too, though the letters of LGBTQ are more accepted inti, Cassata says. In the se of gay actor Wentworth Miller of "Prison Break, " he said  an Instagram post earlier this month that he isn't terted playg straight characters anymore and has ntued to discs the need for better reprentatn.

Look, I'm not here to argue the motiv of Ram Satooh, who recently wrote the lightng-rod lumn that started wh a crique of Sean Hay Promis, Promis and somehow arrived at the ia that never really works when out gay actors try to play straight romantic leads.

It would also be a feat to expla why this would only work one directn -- why dienc wh prenceptns about sexualy would be more likely to enjoy and accept Tom Hanks or Sean Penn as a gay person than they would be to accept Hypothetilly Gay Gee Clooney Guy as a straight person?

GAY ACTORS, STRAIGHT ROL: A LSON IN MAKG SURE YOUR ARGUMENT IS LOGIL

He has spent the last 10 years beg Sean Hay, and Sean Hay was on televisn for many years playg a very particular, very broadly drawn gay character, and not dog a whole lot of other high-profile work. In other words: To turn Sean Hay to a nvcg tt of a possible HGGCG, you have to image that addn to beg known to be Hypothetilly Gay when not on the clock, Gee Clooney Guy spent eight seasons on work televisn playg a very famo gay character. If an actor projects beefy bravado on-screen, but you n't al wh him takg a bubble bath bee your bra is settg off some kd of WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP gay-person alarm that is specifilly stimulated by bubbl -- and if the only reason that alarm go off is that you're wag for to go off bee you already know he's gay -- then I would venture to say that is not Rock Hudson's problem.

And if you uld watch the same scene five mut before you found out Rock Hudson was Not Hypothetilly Gay and see entirely different subtext -- a subversn of and a tweak of machismo through the takg of a bubble bath, for stance, rather than GAY GAY GAY -- then there's absolutely no reason you n't ntue to see that way five mut later.

STANLEY TUCCI SAYS HE THKS STRAIGHT ACTORS SHOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY GAY CHARACTERS

Setooh's efforts to disunt existg gay actors who currently play straight characters -- actors whose succs would seem to knock every possible leg out om this already rickety hypothis -- clu wrg off Neil Patrick Harris, bee the womanizer he plays on How I Met Your Mother is a riture. I watch this show, I watch Jonathan Groff on this show, and I had no ia he was gay, and I thought he was sexy, and I still thk he's sexy, so perhaps he only "seems more like your average theater queen" if you're lookg for . The funnit and sadst (and therefore bt) observatn durg the 2019 Osrs season was that there was more gay sex and queer characters an 18th-century black edy about the queen than there was a bpic about the gay ontman of the band Queen.

But we are never gog to reach a llective cisn, bee such a cisn would be impossible to ’s this bary way of alg wh the issue that rults Rachel Weisz likeng the experience of playg queer characters to playg an alholic, or notor heterosexual Matt Damon tellg an terviewer, “Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anythg about your sexualy, ” which sounds a hell of a lot like Don’t Ask, Don’t a bad qutn will always rult a bad answer. Elsewhere, filmg was terpted when a sheep on the farm went to labor; O’Connor assisted the ’s no doubt that those actors beme pletely enmhed the culture—the work and the sweat and sex and the particular way you lift the gate on the south-facg si of the field so don’t swg back—bee was all specific to Lee’s experience growg up gay a workg-class farmg was wh Rocketman. Some may fd the film’s boast of beg an "uncensored" look at the sger’s life paper-th (his sex addictn is largely left to the imagatn), but there’s no doubt Egerton earned praise for his portrayal of a gay man a perpetual state of flux.

” The actor Darren Criss, a heterosexual who has played gay men both Glee and The Assassatn of Gianni Versace: Amerin Crime Story, has sce said he will no longer play LGBTQ parts, bee he did not want to perpetuate the problem of reprentatn the ’s cisn might not have been wholly necsary, though, as there are larger issu at play; bigger nam are more likely to secure fundg, theory anyway, and a arth of out actors (no openly gay man has ever won the Bt Actor Osr) means the cycle will ntue to feed self. “I am always very flattered when gay men e up to me and talk to me about ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or they talk about ‘Supernova, ’ and they say that, ‘It was jt so betiful, ’ you know, ‘You did the right way, ’” he said.

SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL? A STAR TV WRER SAYS NO

Straight actors playg gay rol, however, isn’t nsired to be as “brave” recent years as ’s been the past, acrdg to cric Guy Lodge, who told The Guardian a 2021 terview: “The ia of beg ‘brave’ for playg gay is gog away. John Benjam Hickey — whose Col “In Treatment” is heterosexual — has been outspokenly gay for years, but Emmy-nomated Emma Corr was not yet publicly queer when she was st as Prcs Diana “The Crown. Knight, Emmy-nomated 2007 for playg hetero heartthrob Gee “Grey’s Anatomy” and who now — alongsi fellow out “The Flight Attendant” st member Griff Matthews — plays gay that Emmy-nomated seri.

”“In the 22 years we’ve worked together, we’ve always brought gay and straight actors for straight and gay rol, ” says Emmy-nomated Sharon Bialy of Bialy/Thomas & Associat, speakg of herself, bs partner Sherry Thomas and associate Rsell Stt. “I’m gog to war, ” he Ben Blackall/HBO Max“It’s a S, ” about 20-somethgs nontg the AIDS crisis the 1980s, broke new ground for s creator, Rsell T Davi, bee he had never wrten about the epimic there was somethg else that ma this HBO Max seri different om the other gay-themed programs Davi had wrten, om the origal “Queer as Folk” to “A Very English Sndal”: “It’s a S” is the first show he has ma which nearly all the gay parts are played by gay the ever-eager pugilist is stirrg ntroversy by argug terviews that, om now on, only gay actors should be allowed gay rol. There is also growg nsens that transgenr rol should be played only by transgenr before the mixed gay-straight stg of “The Inherance, ” an AIDS drama that premiered London 2018 and moved to Broadway the followg year, there hadn’t been very much public bate about the suabily of straight actors gay laid out his new posn a barrage of terviews before the January but of “It’s a S” on Bra’s Channel 4, provokg attacks om the lik of Piers Man — “Equaly means equaly, or don’t, ” he said on “Good Morng Bra” — and Peter Ash, a straight actor who plays a gay role on “Coronatn Street, ” the world’s longt nng soap opera.

SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? 'IT'S PLITED'

Davi is now advotg discrimatn agast heterosexual actors who want to dn for gay fact, the laws of Bra and the Uned Stat make Davi vulnerable to legal challeng if a straight person n prove that he wasn’t nsired for a part bee he isn’t gay. “That would not jtify a blanket policy but might be ed an argument for a particular play or film where thenticy is particularly important — and where the orientatn of the relevant actors is public knowledge, ” Kenyon ’s posn is ght and somewhat puzzlg for reasons that have ls to do wh fairns than wh his own past work: He has prevly ed straight actors very succsfully many gay rol. “I’ve employed plenty of straight people straight parts, and their succs has paved the way for me to be here now, ” Davi he actually believe there is a gay actor who uld have given a more nvcg performance than Grant did?

LET’S SETTLE THIS: CAN STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAY GAY ROL?

”Davi is askg people like Tucci and Firth to reject gay rol the future, though he said he would be willg to make an exceptn if a marquee name were the only way he uld get a productn fanced.

”I suggted to Davi that many 20-somethgs, who are scribg themselv growg numbers as sexually fluid, would be baffled by his sistence that gay rol mt be played by actors a tegory that some young people no longer even regnize. In early December, Netflix dropped s highly anticipated mil edy “The Prom, ” starrg Meryl Streep, Nile Kidman, Andrew Rannells and Jam Corn as fadg Broadway stars who set out to help a lbian teen take her girliend to the film, helmed by out director Ryan Murphy, got mixed reviews, but some lambasted as “homophobic” and “offensive” bee of the stg of Corn, a straight actor, what they saw as an “aggrsively flamboyant” riture of a gay character, Barry Glickman, is a narcissistic theater actor who dons sparklg tuxedo jackets, talks wh a stereotypil gay lisp while flailg his hands around and scrib himself as “gay as a bucket of wigs. "Melda Sue Gordon / NetflixErik Anrson, who ns the film se Awards Watch, lled “The Prom” a “geo and vibrant productn” but tweeted that Corn’s “performance is gross and offensive, the worst gayface a long, long time.

SHOULD GAY ROL BE PLAYED BY GAY ACTORS?

” It was the first time an openly gay actor played a gay character a leadg role a TV part “helped fluence a whole generatn of people who beme wrers and actors and ntent creators, who wanted to see more people like Ricky, more LGBTQ people of lor, and I thk we're seeg the benef of that today, ” said Cz, who served as executive producer of Apple TV’s "Visible: Out on Televisn, ” a 2020 doceri about the history of the LGBTQ movement through the lens of Amerin Cz ma his but “My So Called Life, ” televisn has been creasgly hirg LGBTQ actors to play LGBTQ characters. In 2020 alone, queer actor Kristen Stewart played a lbian Hulu’s Christmas rom- “Happit Season, ” out actors Sarah Plson and Cynthia Nixon played love terts Ryan Murphy’s Netflix seri “Ratched, ” gay actor Dan Levy played a queer character the Emmy-wng Canadian show “Scht’s Creek"and several openly gay actors starred the Netflix adaptn of the Tony Award-wng queer play “The Boys the Band.