Hollywood finally has gotten it together–sort of–and begun packing its movies and TV shows with leading LGBTQ characters. And who’s benefitting most?
Hint: not LGBTQ actors.
Timothée Chalamet, 22, scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination and became Hollywood’s new It Twentysomething for his performance as a gay teen in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. Meanwhile, Armie Hammer earned career-best reviews for joining him under the sheets as his older lover. (He’d already fallen for Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2011 biopic J. Edgar.)
Lucas Hedges, 21, played gay teens in Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, two 2017 Best Picture Oscar nominees. His Three Billboards character was more shades of gay, but the implications were anvil strong. He’ll probably be competing for Best Actor next year for his upcoming role as a 19-year-old pressured into gay conversion therapy in Boy Erased.
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Playing gay has never been so awards-friendly. Since Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger were Oscar-nominated for 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Sean Penn, and Christopher Plummer all have won Academy Awards for doing it, too. Colin Firth, soon to reprise his role as Meryl Streep’s gay ex in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, paved the way for his The King’s Speech win with a Best Actor nod for playing a gay professor mourning the death of his lover in A Single Man.
Moving right along to the T in LGBTQ, Eddie Redmayne was Oscar-nominated and Jared Leto nabbed the gold for their portrayals of transgender characters in The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyer’s Club, respectively. Over on TV, Arrested Development dad Jeffrey Tambor scored two consecutive Emmys for playing a transgender dad on Transparent.
Andrew Garfield is one of Broadway’s most recent beneficiaries. On June 10, he won a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his run as Prior Walter, a gay men with AIDS, in Angels in America. (His co-star Nathan Lane took Best Featured Actor in a Play.)
What do all but one of these guys with the resume-boosting LGBTQ roles have in common? Lane aside, they’re all straight.
Gone are the days when playing gay was considered as much of a potential kiss of death to a straight actor’s career as coming out was to a gay one’s. Although a few were brave enough to go against the flow during those dark ages, for the most part, they stayed in their lane.
But as times have changed and “gay” is no longer a dirty word onscreen, straight actors are reaping most of the rewards (and awards). Assorted performers have come out as gay in recent years, but they aren’t the ones grabbing the bulk of the suddenly coveted gay roles. The Queer Eye guys get more play than Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto, and Jonathan Groff combined.
The conventional thinking has always been that if people know an actor is gay, they may have a hard time buying him as a straight character. In 2012, Less Than Zero author Brett Easton Ellis infamously pooh-poohed the idea of Bomer playing the male lead in Fifty Shades of Grey because, in his opinion, he couldn’t be believable as arrow straight.
I doubt he would have noticed Bomer’s alleged swish if Bomer weren’t out, but many casting directors clearly have similar concerns. Do they think audiences wouldn’t accept gay actors as gay characters either?
Nothing against Andrew Garfield and Timothée Chalamet, who should have won that Oscar, but why are straight actors getting the bulk of love for playing gay characters?
I don’t blame the stars. They’re just doing their jobs. I love that so many straight actors are no longer afraid of kissing a guy onscreen or outright refusing to do so – as Will Smith did while filming 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation – but I wish Hollywood’s current gay boom didn’t revolve mostly around them.
I blame the people behind the scenes, the same ones who still think women can’t open movies and black actors don’t play overseas. Casting directors can show closeted actors that they really are free to be who they are by holding calls for out gay actors. Even if Hollywood’s hiring gods won’t entrust them with the hottest heterosexual roles, those powers that be can still seek them out for the best gay ones.
Some are getting a shot. It feels almost revolutionary that a gay actor (Jussie Smollett) co-stars as a gay character on the hip hop drama Empire, or that openly gay soap star Greg Rikaart portrays an openly gay con artist on Days of Our Lives. But here’s the Days catch: Rikaart’s Leo is just a side man. Straight actors play the daytime drama’s three main gay characters.
Is this sending a message to closeted performers that even if they were to come out and get hired to act what they know, they might still miss out on the meatiest parts?
Brit Ben Whishaw, who was once set to play the role of Freddie Mercury that went to Rami Malek in the upcoming Bohemian Rhapsody, came out in 2013, and he’s continued to work steadily. He was the guy who fell for the title character in The Danish Girl, and in May, he played Hugh Grant’s lover in the BBC miniseries A Very English Scandal. Now it would be nice to see him take the gay lead in a major film.
All those young gay actors who are still in the closet, afraid of coming out, could use the encouragement. They could use their own Timothée Chalamet or Lucas Hedges. They could use a next big thing who plays gay and doesn’t get asked what it’s like to kiss a guy.
It’s not like people all over the world don’t do that every day.
Donston
Acting is acting. And your orientation and preferences should not keep you from getting roles. I feel that way no matter the role and no matter the identities of performers.
However, the lack of openly and legitimately queer actors playing high-profile queer roles is indeed disappointing. It often comes down to an openly gay actor playing a gay role just doesn’t spark as much mass appeal and isn’t as much of an awards magnet. The project would officially be deemed “queer entertainment” and won’t have as much of a chance to appeal to a broad audience without the “straight actors making out” slant. While a great percentage of out producers/directors/actors/entertainers are hetero worshippers who are obsessed with straight guys or fluid and “open-minded” hetero-leaning dudes. So, they’re not even looking for out actors to play these roles.
But of course, the main problem is that the greater precentage of gay/homo-leaning performers remain closeted. Being openly gay/homo-leaning (particularly if you’re a man) still puts a ceiling on your career potential and general public appeal. Hollywood is still a fairly homophobic place and is bottom-line driven. A lot of out of the closet actors run away from gay roles until all the hetero roles dry up. They become obsessed with proving that they can “pull off” straight. While most actors put their careers and opportunities above everything else. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even try to be Hollywood actors.
Lacuevaman
shut up fool. damn you’re an idiot
DCguy
Interesting, the account that normally supports anti-lgbt bigots and Trump (Lacuevaman) has now given up on even trying to argue their false point and now just lashes out and name calls.
Agent9902
Cause that shit is hawt, and the balls are musty!
Donston
This clicks right into the hetero worship I mentioned. (Also, gay men don’t have musty ball?)
It reminds me of the fact that there are plenty of gay/homo-leaning men who maintain girlfriends or wives or who surround themselves with pretty women partially due to ego but mostly because they’re obsessed with straight dudes. They use their significant others or female friends to either lure “straight guys” or engage in threesomes. It’s as big of a reason as any as to why so many gay/homo-leaning guys stayed closeted or hide behind other identities their whole lives. But ay, if you don’t have sexual passion and romantic feelings for men who actually have sexual passion and romantic feelings for other men then you probably shouldn’t identify as gay.
Back to the topic.
Agent9902
One day, when I clear the cobwebs in my mind, I’ll be deserving of a gay man. Love me, because I need it. Very bad.
Donston
Beyond internal and external homophobia and general megalomania, fear of rejection and fear of being emotionally vulnerable do seem to be the biggest reasons for hetero worship and/or staying closeted for a long period of time. Developing feelings for a guy who actually has real and substantial romantic and sexual feelings and connections towards you does seem to scare a lot of dudes, particularly if they’ve already been through a bad break-up.
MacAdvisor
I am sure straight actors would be happy to stop playing gay roles if gay actors stopped playing straight ones.
Donston
Very few openly gay actors get high-profile straight roles. They rarely get high profiles roles in general.
Creamsicle
Casting for mainstream movies is all about name recognition and not ability nor talent. As long as the best thing to do for your career is to stay in the closet until after you make a name for yourself, we will continue to see straight actors playing gay roles to exhibit their versatility and so that they can be called “brave,” by stuffed shirt movie critics.
miserylovedme24
Timothee Chalamet is a terrible example to use in this article considering he’s one of the most talented actors out there and a clear future Oscar winner. A film would be crazy to pass up casting him just because another actor is actually gay. Casting based soleomt whether an actor is gay or not would be ridiculous and actually a step back.
WindsorOntario
Because gay guys aren’t attracted to other gay guys. There’s something different about a young straight man’s physical body and build that for whatever reason most gay guys don’t have. It’s the same with two women. Nobody wants to see two stereotypical lesbians with crewcuts and flannel shirts. They want to see two Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, which makes us really ask if society is as tolerant and ready to see gay relationships as we thought. If they can’t handle seeing us exist in the world – hell if WE as gay people don’t even want to see what two real gay men or women look like in the world – then how far have we come for real?
Heywood Jablowme
That’s a very odd take on it. Your theory may apply to a FEW (including you, I’m guessing) but you totally overlook the fact that millions of gay guys do manage to be attracted to gay guys and do manage to find relationships.
cancorv
That’s a very odd take on it, as a frequent contributor here has just contributed. It always strikes as odd when a person assumes that all members of their group think as they do. You’re not the first to do, Windsor, and neither shall you be the last. Such thinking makes me wonder what life experience such thinkers have had or, perhaps more pertinently, how they have processed their experiences. Very odd indeed.
DCguy
Why?
Easy, for the same reason they used to have white actors play Native American, Asian, or Latino characters in movies. Bigotry.
cancorv
And according to his interview with Ellen at least, Nick Robinson, who played Simon in the latest big gay thing, is also str8.
jasentylar
Zachary Quinto was openly gay when he was cast as Spock in the new Star Trek films. Ezra Miller was openly gay when he was cast to play The Flash. Both huge roles in major franchises.
mujerado
Ian McKellan was nominated for his role as director James Whale. If a straight actor had given precisely the same character, he’d have won. I’m not saying McKellan lost because Hollywood doesn’t like gay actors, but that they have the idea that it’s not as much of a stretch for a gay actor to play a gay character. When William Hurt played an effeminate gay man in Kiss of the Spider Woman he was lauded by critics for his “brave” performance, and he won the Oscar for a performance which, truly, wasn’t that great. The theory is that a gay actor isn’t acting when he plays a gay role. Stupid? Yes, but there it is.