by Domenick Scudera
Author Bret Easton Ellis has been tweeting that actor Matt Bomer is too gay to play the lead role in the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey. "OK I'll say it. Matt Bomer isn't right for Christian Grey because he is openly gay," he wrote, adding
that "Fifty Shades of Grey demands an actor that is genuinely into
women. Get it?!?" In stating his opinion, he is reviving the dispute
about whether openly gay actors playing heterosexual characters can be
accepted by American audiences. This debate has been raging of late
because more and more actors are coming out of the closet and continuing
to maintain their careers. In 2010 Newsweek printed an article about this topic, titled "Straight Jacket,"
written by journalist Ramin Setoodeh. The article concluded that
actors such as Sean Hayes and Jonathan Groff, actors who had publically
acknowledged their homosexuality, were no longer able to play
heterosexual roles because audiences would not "buy" them playing
straight.
Is this true? Must gay actors kiss straight roles goodbye?
Heterosexual actors do not seem to have this problem. They are
easily accepted as gay in film. Tom Hanks, William Hurt, Sean Penn,
Charlize Theron, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Christopher Plummer, all
heterosexual actors, as far as I know, won Oscars for playing homosexual
characters. Where was the outrage when these films were cast? Was
anyone shouting, "Tom Hanks playing gay? Never! No way!
Unbelievable!!!"? No. Instead, Hanks was handed an Academy Award, and
audiences marveled at how brave he was for tackling an incredibly
challenging role. Simply put, he received his Oscar for Philadelphia because he excelled at his job, his acting job, his job of making audiences believe that he was someone other than himself.
Meryl Streep is one of our most lauded actresses. She received an
Oscar last year for playing Margaret Thatcher, but Streep is not
British. She received an Oscar for playing a Holocaust survivor in Sophie's Choice, yet she is not Polish. She received an Oscar for playing a woman fighting for the custody of her child in Kramer vs. Kramer,
yet she is not divorced. We admire Streep for her incredible
transformations, for acting so truthfully in every role. But let us not
forget: She is acting. Why is it difficult to accept Matt Bomer as
straight, yet easy to believe Meryl Streep as a nun, as Julia Child, as a
fashion magazine editor, as an Abba-singing mamma?
The role of Christian Grey is one of the most coveted in Hollywood.
It brings to mind another hotly contested role when another famous book
was turned into a movie: Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.
This Southern belle character was so beloved by book readers that the
producers took great care in trying to find just the right woman to play
the role, famously auditioning hundreds of would-be Scarletts. In the
end, they chose an actress who was not Southern at all. Heck, she was
not even American. It was a British actress who played this very
Southern American character, Vivien Leigh. And she played the role so
brilliantly that -- you guessed it -- she won an Oscar. A dozen years
later, she was handed her second Oscar for playing another iconic
Southern character, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
I am a director, and I have shocking insight for Ellis and Setoodeh
and others who think gay actors cannot play straight: Actors are acting.
Yes, I know, it is hard to believe! Actors portray people who are not
themselves. MORE!
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