As Hollywood representation starts to catch up with real life, more queer actors are getting to play queer characters.
But does that mean that only gay actors should play gay characters? It’s a hotly debated issue, one that many gay actors and filmmakers have spoken out about. Still, many of today’s prestige queer roles go to straight actors, and straight actors are still winning awards for playing gay.
So, what do straight actors think of this issue? Scroll through to find out.
Paul Mescal
“It depends who’s in charge of telling the story,” Paul Mescal said when asked about playing a gay man as a straight actor in All of Us Strangers. “The issue is that there have been so many queer performances in cinema that have been offensive, but that’s because the filmmakers and the actors have been careless. I don’t think this film exists in that conversation whatsoever. And that’s it.”
Darren Criss
Criss, who won an Emmy for playing a gay man in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace and played a gay teen in Glee has said that he's done playing gay.
"There are certain [queer] roles that I'll see that are just wonderful. But I want to make sure I won't be another straight boy taking a gay man's role," Criss told Bustle. "The reason I say that is because getting to play those characters is inherently a wonderful dramatic experience. It has made for very, very compelling and interesting people."
Cate Blanchett
Blanchett, who has been nominated twice for Oscars for playing lesbians (in Carol and Tár) and won for playing real-life bisexual Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, said that the issue of straight actors playing gay "speaks to something that I'm quite passionate about in storytelling generally, but in film specifically, which is that film can be quite a literal medium. And I will fight to the death for the right to suspend disbelief and play roles beyond my experience. I think reality television and all that that entails had an extraordinary impact, a profound impact on the way we view the creation of character."
"I think it provides a lot of opportunity, but the downside of it is that we now, particularly in America, I think, we expect and only expect people to make a profound connection to a character when it's close to their experience," she said.
She recently defended playing gay again.
“I have to listen very hard when people have an issue with it,” she said. “I just don’t understand the language they’re speaking, and I need to understand it because you can’t dismiss the obsession with those labels – behind the obsession is something really important.”
“If [Carol] was made now, me not being gay, would I be given public permission to play that role? I don’t know the answer to that," she added.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Gyllanhaal, who has played gay roles in movies like Brokeback Mountain and Velvet Buzzsaw, spoke about playing gay in a 2021 interview.
"I don't know. Maybe?" Gyllenhaal said when asked if he thinks people would have a different reaction to straight actors playing gay today. "Part of the medicine of storytelling is that we were two straight guys playing these parts. There was a stigma about playing a part like that, you know, why would you do that? And I think it was very important to both of us to break that stigma."
"But then again, I think that has led the way towards people saying, you know, people of all different experiences should be playing more roles, that it shouldn't be limited to a small group of people. And I believe that," he added.
Tom Hanks
Hanks won an Oscar for portraying a gay man with AIDS in Philadelphia, but now says he wouldn't take the role.
"Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so," Hanks said toThe New York Times Magazine. "The whole point of Philadelphia was, 'Don't be afraid.' One of the reasons people weren't afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man."
"We're beyond that now, and I don't think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy," he continued. "It's not a crime, it's not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. Do I sound like I'm preaching? I don't mean to."
Benedict Cumberbatch
When Cumberbatch was nominated for an Oscar for playing gay in The Power of the Dog, he defended taking the role.
"I feel very sensitive about representation, diversity, and inclusion," Cumberbatch told IndieWire. "One of the appeals of the job was the idea that in this world, with this specific character, there was a lot that was private, hidden from view."
"It wasn't done without thought," he continued. "I also feel slightly like, is this a thing where our dance card has to be public? Do we have to explain all our private moments in our sexual history? I don't think so."
Stanley Tucci
“Obviously, I believe that’s fine,” Tucci, who played gay in movies like The Devil Wears Prada and Supernova said about taking gay roles.
“I am always very flattered when gay men come up to me and talk about [my role in] The Devil Wears Prada or they talk about Supernova, and they say that, ‘It was just so beautiful,’ you know, ‘You did it the right way,’” he said. “Because often it’s not done the right way.”
He said that in his mind, “an actor is an actor is an actor,” and that “you are supposed to play different people. You just are. That’s the whole point of it.”
Rachel Weisz
Weisz was asked about playing a lesbian in the film Disobedience.
"I wanted to tell this story and represent it; I see my task as not to tell the story I’ve lived. When I played Blanche Dubois on the stage, I’m not an alcoholic. And I’m not interested in sleeping with teenage boys! But that’s the character. So I see storytelling as me becoming people that I’m not," she said.
"Sebastian [Lelio, the director] isn’t a gay woman. He has a trans woman play a trans woman in A Fantastic Woman, but he said he’s allowed to be disobedient and cast who he wants I guess. I don’t know what to say beyond that. It’s about becoming and representing someone else. I’m not anyone that I play, otherwise I’d just be in a documentary."