20 of our favore straight actors as gay characters | CNN

Contents:

• GAY ACTORS, STRAIGHT ROL: A LSON IN MAKG SURE YOUR ARGUMENT IS LOGIL
• 20 GREAT ROL: OUR FAVORE STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS
• 15 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT ROL TO PERFECTN
• BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH OPENS UP ABOUT STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS
• STANLEY TUCCI ARGU STRAIGHT ACTORS CAN PLAY GAY CHARACTERS IF DONE ‘THE RIGHT WAY’
• STANLEY TUCCI IS PRETTY FE WH STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS
• 8 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT CHARACTERS
• SHOULD STRAIGHT ACTORS STILL PLAY GAY CHARACTERS? 'IT'S PLITED'
• NEIL PATRICK HARRIS SHAR HIS THOUGHTS ON STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS
• STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS

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

"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.

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.

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

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?

I am assumg, however, that a lot of men who have played oppose Krist Chenoweth -- the gay on and the straight on both -- have not actually been love wh her, and have not need to be.

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.

15 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT ROL TO PERFECTN

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.

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 .

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH OPENS UP ABOUT STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS

Do this suggt that would make the character seem ls distractgly maybe-gay if the character were sgg "Like A Virg" and wrhg around on a bed, but Groff hadn't e out?

Some of the actors even went so far as to play straight characters who treated gay people badly and managed to do so nvcgly that the dience believed a ltle themselv.

STANLEY TUCCI ARGU STRAIGHT ACTORS CAN PLAY GAY CHARACTERS IF DONE ‘THE RIGHT WAY’

" However, he went on to say 2014 that although he's proud of beg gay and his reer has never suffered for , he's a b wary of discsg his personal life wh the media. Most famoly, he plays Spock the current Star Trek movie anchise, and although Spock has a lot of homoerotic subtext wh Kirk, he's datg Uhura the movi. Thredson wasn't jt a horrifyg villa, he was a doctor workg to get lbian ma character Lana Wters (played by Sarah Plson, a gay woman) to be straight aga.

STANLEY TUCCI IS PRETTY FE WH STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS

Quto me out 2011, sayg "that livg a gay life whout publicly acknowledgg is simply not enough to make any signifint ntributn to the immense work that li ahead on the road to plete equaly.

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. Kane said she has worked wh some patients who felt nfed bee they intified as gay but didn't act like the gay characters they saw on problem here, she said, is that some of the actors lean to stereotyp, perpetuatg them.

8 GAY ACTORS WHO PLAYED STRAIGHT CHARACTERS

She remembers when Matt Bomer – a cisgenr man who intifi as gay — was st the small budget film "Anythg" as a transgenr woman 2017, replacg a trans actrs who was origally st the role before the stud wanted a bigger name. "It's almost rctive to say straight actors n't play gay characters bee that impli an 'otherg' of gay people, or that gay people are so fundamentally different than straight people that one uld never play the other.

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

However, there needs to be a distctn between actors who put effort to takg the LGBTQ rol serly, and the actors — like Corn "The Prom" — who perhaps jt relied heavily on stereotyp to portray a gay character.

”Benedict Cumberbatch opens up about straight actors playg gay characters followg the but of his new film, “The Power of The Dog, ” at the Telluri Film Ftival. 6, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC / Source: TODAYIt’s a topic on which Hollywood has yet to reach a nsens: whether or not ’s appropriate for straight actors to portray gay characters film and ’s also a topic that Benedict Cumberbatch is faiar wh, havg been nomated for an Amy Award for his performance as mathematician Alan Turg, a man both prosecuted and persecuted for his sexual orientatn, 2014’s “The Imatn Game.

In early December, Netflix's "The Prom" was lambasted for stg Jam Corn, who is straight, as what crics lled an “aggrsively flamboyant” riture of a gay his 2016 Emmy acceptance speech for his portrayal of a transgenr woman Amazon seri “Transparent, " actor Jefey Tambor said he "would not be unhappy were I the last cisgenr male to play a transgenr character on televisn. "In 2018, "Glee" alum Darren Criss told Btle he would no longer take rol portrayg LGBTQ+ characters to make sure he's not "another straight boy takg a gay man’s role. "Acrdg to GLAAD's annual Stud Rponsibily Inx, 22 of 118 films released by major movie studs 2019 clud characters who were lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and/or queer (18.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS SHAR HIS THOUGHTS ON STRAIGHT ACTORS PLAYG GAY CHARACTERS

Anrson not that a movie like "Love, Simon" avoid cricism for stg a straight lead actor bee was the first film by a major Hollywood stud to foc on a gay teenage romance. "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 thk we need to stop unrvalug that, the feelg that if a gay person plays a gay person ’s not actg but if a straight person plays a gay person, we give them an Osr. "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.

Stanley Tucci spoke up fense of straight actors playg gay characters, so long as ’s done “the right way, ” and don’t slip to stereotyp, durg an appearance on BBC Rad 4’s “Dert Island Discs” program. Most recently, he and Col Firth -starred Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, a romantic drama about a gay uple who take a road trip after Tucci’s character is diagnosed wh onset mentia. His character Sean the 2010 film Burlque was gay, and most famoly Tucci played the magaze art director Nigel Kiplg The Devil Wears Prada, a character who was gay, but whose sexualy wasn’t really a major pot the movie.

STRAIGHT ACTORS WHO HAVE PLAYED GAY CHARACTERS

I’m always very flattered when gay men e up to me and talk about The Devil Wears Prada, or they talk about Supernova, and they say, ‘It was jt so betiful. Darren Criss, for stance, who played gay men on Glee and The Assassatn of Gianni Versace: Amerin Crime Story, said 2018 that he would no longer play queer rol so he wouldn’t “be another straight boy takg a gay man’s role. ” Tom Hanks even told The New York Tim wouldn’t be right for a straight man to be st as the gay character he played 1993’s Philalphia if the movie were beg ma today (Hanks won an Osr for his performance).

While there may not be a simple answer, Stanley Tucci—who has played gay rol The Devil Wears Prada and 2020's Supernova (not to mentn Emma Stone’s father who was inilly gay once Easy A)—recently weighed , sayg that he believ ’s perfectly acceptable as long as ’s done “the right way. “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. ”While Tucci didn’t elaborate on this particular form of bad-fah actg, ’s pretty easy to assume that he was referrg to the myriad of films which LGBTQ+ people have been rced to harmful, homophobic stereotyp over the years.

) Or perhaps he was referencg the super ol clatn of, erm, certa actors to fensively claim that the gay films they star are not jt “a gay story about the guys beg gay. 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 .