IIRC the closest canon Star Trek has ever come to hinting at Sulu’s sexuality in either direction was him having a daughter in Generations; which of course wouldn’t really mean anything now, let alone 3 hundred years in a future where interspecies hybrids are absurdly common.
Well, we get to count Takei as Mirror-Sulu pawing at Regular-Uhura, right?
Eh, I think that counts about as much as Mirror-Kira’s predatory lesbianism.
Ah, but I’m not using it to count toward Regular-Sulu being heterosexual, but toward whether Takei played a heterosexual character – namely, Mirror-Sulu – on TOS.
…aaaand Michael Douglas just won the Golden Globe for playing Liberace.
I’ve heard several times here that John Mahoney is gay. Neither his imdb or, more surprisingly, his Wikipedia pave, mention it. So I’ll need a cite.
If it helps, Mahoney has played gay roles – on ER and in The Broken Hearts Club.
Straight actors playing a gay couple.
Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain.
Gay actors playing a straight couple:
Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O’Donnell as Teyvre and Golde in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
Liberace was gay?! :eek:
More surprising, he’s British!
I’ve heard it was pretty evident in his past but kept his private life quiet. In thisinterview he mentions that sex has been over for him for years. 25 years or so ago he had colon cancer and has a colostomy.
Dammit, Loach, you screwed up this joke. I came in here to post:
Wait, you’re saying Michael Douglas is GAY???
I flipped a coin.
I decided to riff on the fact that some were genuinely surprised that he was gay, he started off being portrayed as popular with the ladies and he won a libel lawsuit against a newspaper that said he was gay.
The other way would have worked too.
Aren’t straight actors playing gay characters, and vice versa, almost as common as gay characters and gay actors, respectively? I’ve never been aware of any tendency to attempt to cast gay actors as gay characters. I don’t mean to be facetious, but they are actors after all.
As with the other “whats the big deal” posts on here you are kind of not looking at this in context. Its probably been less than 10 years since it has become almost no big deal. In the very recent past a straight actor, especially a leading man type, had to look long and hard at what playing a gay character would mean for his career and future roles. Mostly gay actors stayed in the closet for fear that being out would limit their roles. What may seem common now was not so common until very recently.
In the film Deathtrap Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, both straight in real life, kill off Caine’s wife, so they can become a couple, but it appears that Caine’s character may just be pretending to be gay to steal a play by Reeve’s character and, of course, use Reeve to do the actual killing of his (Caine’s) wife and wants to kill off Reeve’s character also. So is Caine’s character really gay? Reeve’s is, but it’s not clear on Caine’s.
Perhaps one the earliest examples of a well-known, straight male playing an openly gay character comes in Staircase (late '60s) staring as gay hairdressers in a committed (if confused) relationship were Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. Both were at the height of their acting powers…An interesting side note; Clint Eastwood called Burton (whom he had just starred with in Where Eagles Dare) and told him not to do the film because it would destroy his career.
Richard Chamberlin was a major television heartthrob for generations of women.
I think you’re misremembering…
[SPOILERS]
…Caine doesn’t want to steal Reeve’s play.
At the time of the murder, there is no play; Caine convinces his wife the guy’s written a play he wants to steal, but Reeve doesn’t actually start writing one until after she’s been killed – a play Caine then wants to destroy, since it’s about a closeted playwright and his gay lover murdering said wife, and, uh, yeah, no; he’d rather just live off that sweet inheritance money than get any percentage of that ever seeing the light of day.
Would you say the character of Mycroft Holmes is straight? If so, then his depiction by Mark Gatiss in Sherlock would qualify.
Maybe Mycroft is just asexual, though, like his brother.
I’m not sure this is really relevant to what I was asking/saying, but I fear I’m already getting close to a threadshit, so I’d better shut up!
This reminded me of a movie in which the big twist at the end is that the two men are gay and they conspired to kill the one’s wife. Polly Walker plays the wife. I’m going to spoiler tag the title and the two straight actors playing gay (actually, playing gay men who are playing straight) so as not to ruin it for anyone: it’s Dark Harbor, the two actors are Alan Rickman and Norman Reedus.