Seriously. I would get down on my knees and blow Heath Ledger in a heartbeat for what Gyllenhaal made from Brokeback. I’d do it for half. I’d do it for an eighth. (An eighth of the salary.)
That’s twice you’ve tried to come to my rescue. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have seen your responses ion various threads and, although I seldom agree with you, I have found you to be one of the more pleasant posters on this board. You are truly a gentlemen (or lady, whichever applies). OK, to appease the PC Gestapo, you are a gentleperson.
I realize that maybe my feelings are either unpopular or I might not be expressing them clearly. I understand that I have offended some people because of my personal opinions. I am not now and never have said that my views are the correct ones or attempted to force them on other people. Maybe my examples were too extreme to some people. If I had simply said that I thought the idea of kissing another man was comparable to eating broccoli I probably would have offended a representative of the Broccoli Growers of America (and the BGA has a very tough lobby).
Well, I thought it was an interesting topic, and one I’ve wondered about myself. I was in three highschool plays and one play in college during my only semester (Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. I was Dudard, the French Lawyer.) So, I’m interested, if not very knowledgable, in dynamics like these. But I’m not sure at this point if it’s ever going to happen. People tend to steer clear of a crashed thread outside the Pit. And sadly, it isn’t a case where Otto had a thread going and you stopped in to say that you thought kissing men was gross. It was completely the other way around. And everything he has said that he can’t stand in others is precisely what he is doing here. It’s just… bizarre.
I knew there was another reason I liked you! In high school our drama teacher attempted a production of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano and several absurdist skits. I was Mr. Smith. Of course it was a total flop because the audience didn’t know what the hell was going on. They were expecting another Neil Simon comedy. Public high school students just weren’t ready for it.
Anyway, thank you again.
I’ll add that I played a gay cowboy (named “Jackson”) in a one-act play four years before Brokeback Mountain. I didn’t have to simulate homoerotic contact with another male, although I did enter the stage eating a banana. And I didn’t have a problem with it at all.
It seems that lots of people on this thread have forgotten that the subject is professional actors. Not delicate folks who may have appeared in a high school play.
I’ve heard of several male/female couples who hated each other–but had torrid on-screen kisses.
Recently, I watched (again) the Buffy show where Angel & Buffy have their first kiss. The commentary notes they had a “breath” contest–trying to gross each other out by eating smelly stuff beforehand. David Boreanaz & Sarah Michelle Gellar are both apparently het & quite attractive. But they are able to separate “romance” from what they do before a camera.
Now that I would not enjoy at all. Bananas are rather gross.
But do you find them disgusting and offensive? How do you feel about other people eating them?
Kidding!!!
Disgusting, but not offensive. Other people can eat them all they want but I’m a guy and wouldn’t want to eat one myself. (I couldn’t help saying that!) And yes, I would one if I was actor and the role called for it. 
Did my other posts help out with what you’re looking for?
Yes, thank you. You and the other people who explained about the actor’s craft have given me a good insight. I appreciate your responses.
The latter is a twisted interpretation on your part with no basis in reality. The former I take as your concession of my point. Thanks.
As for the topic at hand, I thought I summed it up pretty well back in post [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8158350&postcount=3]#3.
They ARE actors. I would feel repulsed kissing another person I didn’t care a lot about no matter what their gender! But then, I am not an actor who is paid to do so.
I do find it amusing that Hollywood gets strait people to play gay characters all the time. What, they can’t find any gay actors? I just think it is funny.
Not gay actors with leading-man star power, it seems. A lot of Brokeback Mountain’s appeal came from its big-name stars. Had they gone with unknowns, the buzz wouldn’t have been nearly as great.
Now, as to why there aren’t Hollywood leading men who are gay - that’s another question (I think we even had a thread on the very topic some months ago.)
Oh, and make that openly gay.
There still isn’t an enormous pool of openly gay name actors, and as noted none with the star power to carry a major studio motion picture. I disagree that BBM wouldn’t have generated some buzz with openly gay actors in the role, because Ledger and Gyllenhall aren’t stars of the same magnitude as say a Pitt or a Clooney, plus BBM wasn’t a major studio film. Certainly having name actors helped though. Gay actors don’t want to get typecast any more than str8 actors do, so they may have some hesitation about taking a large number of gay roles for fear of that typecasting.
As for why [del]Tom Cruise[/del] I mean [del]John Travolta[/del] I mean some hypothetical mega-watt star doesn’t come out, it’s all about the money, honey. The perception is still that the movie-going public won’t accept gay actors in certain roles, especially action-adventure and romantic leads. The meme is that the little people in the dark have to be able to identify with the star (males) or think they have a chance with the star (females) and that a gay man in that type of role won’t be accepted. The theory won’t be put to the test until such time as a mega-watt star actually comes out but no such star has any motivation to come out and endanger their multi-million dollar paydays and no studio has any motivation to gamble tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars to prove or disprove the hypothesis.
C’mon, Vin Diesel, you can tell us. We’ll still like ya. 
Hijacks aside, this is a really good topic. I’ve done a fair bit of acting, and heard a lot of people speak about it, too, and I think that the whole idea of “becoming the character” and “not feeling grossed out by kissing another man because you’re not you, you’re your character” is sort of a myth. You don’t actually become another person when you act. There is a part of you that is actually you, that is not the character at all, which must keep functioning at all times while you’re acting. When you’re onstage, for example, you must be able to keep a constantly running stream of thoughts completely separate from the character and the “moment”: “make sure you stand so they can see your face my blocking says to go downstage right… now… crap project project they can’t hear you crap her microphone fell off well I’ll lean in closer so she can be heard did he drop a line I think he did I better cover and the song just started and it’s a tricky rhythm so I’d better count it in my head 1-and-2-and-3-and GO.” There is plenty of room in this stream for thoughts like: “my pants just ripped. Uh oh.” Or “my mom is in the front row.” Or even, “I’m kissing a man. This is kind of icky.”
The key thing is that if you are a good actor, you can put that whole stream behind a wall. Your face, body, and eyes are visible, and your voice audible, to the audience; your thoughts are not. You can be as grossed out, turned on, frightened, uncomfortable, tired, or hungry as you want - if you have complete control over your voice, face, body, and eyes, it will never matter a bit.
I just finished doing a show with an actor who was in the process of passing a kidney stone. He was in overwhelming pain. Backstage he would stagger around. He was vomiting into garbage cans every five minutes or so. Onstage there was a part of him that was obviously not “being the character;” it was trying not to vomit, or thinking OW OW OW OW OW OW. But because he had complete control over his face, eyes, body, and voice, no one in the audience ever had a clue.
Exactly, storyteller. Since erie’s “eating dogshit” metaphor didn’t really get anywhere, I offer an alternative that is also the result of a certain amount of fundamental emotional programming in some cultures: undressing in public. We are taught to have a visceral reaction to doing so; it is not natural to us as biological beings. Some people overcome this and some don’t, at the doctor’s office, or with a lover, or at the swimming pool, or whatever.
Most stage actors have, at one time or another, had to change clothes backstage with other actors present, and certain had to change clothes in a dressing room with other people of the same sex. Some actors are better than others at recognizing their own learned behavioral conditioning than are others.
That’s what acting is, really: knowing your own instrument, your body and your face and your hands and eyes, well enough to isolate the bits of your reaction that are “yours” and replace them with someone else’s. Actors suppress their own (natural or learned) reactions all the time — the fear of going on stage, the urge to laugh at something funny, trying not to squint when the lights are in your eyes, the urge to flinch when you know that off-stage explosion or that prop gun is about to fire.
Besides, as has already been said, acting roles are self-selecting. There are undoubtedly actors who can’t kiss someone of the same gender for the reasons you say. They don’t get those roles.