How Audiences Can Learn to Accept Gay Actors Playing Straight Roles

After Stonewall, Hollywood released a number of gay-themed films, among them Staircase (1969), The Boys in the Band (1970), and The Music Lovers (1970). The leads in Staircase, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, played a gay couple. The Boys in the Band was full of gay characters. The Music Lovers told the story of Tchaikovsky as a gay man conflicted by his sexuality. No one ever assumed that Harrison or Burton were gay because of Staircase, while the cast of Boys went out of their way in press junkets to point out their heterosexuality — indeed, Cliff Gorman, who played the gayest character in that film was, in fact, very straight. History, of course, has revealed that Richard Chamberlain, who played Tchaikovsky, is very gay, something he denied at the time that film came out. Interestingly enough, Harrison, Burton, and Gorman all played their characters as extremely gay, while Chamberlain's Tchaikovsky was gay in action but not in mannerism.

I remember reading a quote from an actor of the era (and cannot find it now) in which he asked, "Why is it that, if you play a murderer, no one assumes that you are a murderer, but if you play a homosexual, everyone assumes you are?" I want to say that this was either Gorman or Chamberlain but, again, the internets, they do nothing.

Forty-two years later, we are at place where openly gay actors play straight characters and openly straight actors play gay characters, and this question: How can audiences accept a gay actor playing a straight leading role? It should be obvious, but perhaps it's not — how have audiences accepted straight actors playing gay characters? The answer is "Willing suspension of disbelief." It's a rule as old as Aristotle. In order for drama to work, you have to accept that everything presented dramatically is fake, then ignore the fakeness in order to accept the story.

In the hindsight of history, a very telling example comes to mind — the teaming of Rock Hudson, Tony Randall and Doris Day. They made three romantic comedies together: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964). In each one, Rock Hudson played the butch love-interest to Doris Day, while Tony Randall played the fussy, single, awkward-with-women (if not fearful of them) third wheel. Basically, Randall's character was pretty much Day's gay BFF in the secret code of the day, i.e. the "sissy." Fifty years later, of course, we know that Rock Hudson was as gay as they come while Randall was decidedly straight. It does add an interesting layer of irony to watching each of these films now, knowing that, in real life, Randall-Day would be the likely pairing. However, film is not real life, and within the world of each of those films, Hudson-Day is absolutely believable. Personally, I find Rock Hudson playing a straight man much more believable than Chamberlain's turn as a gay composer, but that's probably because being in the closet worked to the latter's disadvantage.

As far as audience acceptance actually happening, we have one stellar example in Neil Patrick Harris, who has become even more popular after coming out — he arguably holds the title of Hollywood Actor Nobody Hates, and coming out has had no effect on his role of the womanizing Barney in How I Met Your Mother. He came out one year into the series, which premiered in the fall of 2005 and, if anything, it has heightened the wink and nod satire of that character, as well as his second and third appearances as himself in the Harold and Kumar franchise.

Perhaps Neil Patrick Harris represents a healthy coming full-circle on the issue. In the 60s, 70s and even 80s, a self-proclaimed straight actor playing a gay character itself became a commentary on homosexuality, whether it was the over-the-top camp of multiple straight men swishing it up in Boys in the Band or Daniel Day Lewis's matter-of-fact performance as a straight-acting gay boy in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Now, the pump is on the other foot, so that a self-proclaimed gay actor like NPH can play an over-the-top macho breeder, and his own sexuality becomes the commentary on the role. We accept both actor and part because, after all, it's just acting.

That's the takeaway here. No one believes that Anthony Hopkins is a cannibalistic serial killer, or that Meryl Streep is a right-wing Prime Minister, or that Helen Mirren is the Queen of England — but we will gladly believe each of them is that person for a couple of hours in the dark of the cinema. Likewise, we finally seem to be moving to the point where, despite knowing an actor's real-life sexuality, we're willing to forget it in the make-believe land of film, and this is progress.

- Jon Bastian