Great post, explains the issues very well!
Really? My recently-out daughter loved him in it.
I thought he did just fine in the role (although almost anybody looks like a bad actor next to Streep and I thought she killed in The Prom) .
I dunno why but of all the examples listed here, none of them made a difference to me except this one. It disappoints me. And I’m a hetero woman! (Or maybe “and I’m a hetero woman…so who cares.”)
Suranne Jones was magnificent in the role though, and I say that as a gay woman. (See also, Jennifer Beals in The L Word. Just fabulous).
Yeah without a doubt! I had a little crush on her even!
We ALL did, honey!
While true, I’m not sure it remains so if you mean out gay men. I know there was enough stigma that actors would often stay in the closet. It’s a lot better now, but I’m not sure at what point that happened.
That said, I can’t say I’ve heard many gay men complain recently about how they aren’t getting roles. It seems that straight men often play gay men, and gay men often play straight men.
That’s usually the barometer on the other ones: that cis actors can play trans people once trans actors commonly play cis people. I know one trans person who has explicitly said that, once an openly trans person plays a cis main character in some high budget movie, then maybe it would be okay for cis women to play trans women, and cis men to play trans men.
(She was not too happy at all about the other direction, but that’s a different discussion unless the OP wants to extend this.)
I don’t think you should feel bad, but nobody I know who is lesbian or bi and seen it has been disappointed with her performance.
Also, I’m struggling to think of any out LGBT actress who could have played Anne Lister. I mean, apart from any number of unknown actresses still trying to get a break; this role needed someone with some name recognition.
Not disappointed in her performance whatsoever! Just disappointed that such an amazing, tough, sexy, smart lesbian character is played by a straight actress. No big deal, I think i was just hoping such an actress could be matched with the role. Like how they were able to hit it out of the park on OITNB with Laverne Cox and Samira Wiley.
Yes, because gay people find straight characters playing gay characters hot (or so I’ve heard).
This whole “you have to BE what you’re acting” movement is rather stupid. Sure, be diverse in your casting, but otherwise, IT’S ACTING.
I was so disappointed to find out that Rick Moranis wasn’t even a real scientist, let alone one who had accidentally shrunken his kids twice.
It is sometimes important, though. If you haven’t seen the movie Voices, in which Amy Irving attempts to play a Deaf person, it’s cringeworthy. Her ASL bruises the eyes.
In fact, the whole movie is such a mess that protests by the National Theater of the Deaf, the National Association of the Deaf, and a lot of sympathetic hearing actors, got the film withdrawn from distribution during its initial run.
It still got released of video, and probably DVD, but it never completed its theatrical run.
You might say that well, yes, but it was bad acting. In an overall bad film. However, until the film was finished, no Deaf people had seen a frame of it, and not a single one had a chance to comment on it, nor let anyone know how awful either Irving, or the whole storyline was.
I picked that as an example, because Irving is not, on the whole, a bad actress.
I don’t know that she could ever have been made to look like a native speaker of ASL, but she could have looked better than she did, and she certainly could have been coached to appear better than she did.
However, hiring a Deaf actress would have solved all of that, and cheaply (I don’t mean a Deaf actress would have worked for less-- I mean, no ASL coaches, no coaches in Deaf mannerisms, etc.) A Deaf actress would have spoken up about how much of the script was rubbish, and it could have gone back for rewrites.
Then, the film could have had the endorsement of the NTD and NAD. If you don’t think those would have helped, remember that they got the film as it was shut down-- and remember that in 1988, the students of Gallaudet shut down the university and got the president to resign-- with the aid of the NAD, the NTD, the NTID, CSUN, the RID, and most shockingly, even the AG Bell Assn.
In regard to gay characters playing straight, however, there’s this: the minority always knows the mind of the majority better than the majority knows the mind of the minority (speaking politically, not literally, since under that paradigm, women, who hold up 53% of the sky, are a “minority”). Women know men, but men do not know women. Black people know white people, but white people do not know black people. Gay people know straight people, but straight people do not know gay people. And disabled people know able-bodied people, but able-bodied people do not know disabled people.
As gay people become less and less of a minority in the political sense, and become knowable to the majority, it’s easier and easier for straight actors to play them well.
Honestly, there are some pretty terrible performances from the 60s, 70s & 80s-- attributable to bad writing as much as bad performance, but again, a gay actor hired for that fact would have spoken out.
In regard specifically to gay characters, I think we’ll see more of them in general, and so we’ll se plenty of them played by straight actors, and also plenty of them played by out gay actors-- and more gay actors who are out in the first place.
I also think, to this day, that a certain amount of straight audiences are more comfortable with gay couples on the screen if they know at least one of the actors is actually straight (perhaps because they know no hanky-panky is going on behind the scenes?). So, right or wrong, I think that practice will continue to some extent.
I think the Venn Diagram of people who are comfortable with gay couples on the screen and people who are uncomfortable with actual gay couples are two circles far apart.
I think you’re wrong. And I think a lot of people have come to the realization that they’re going to have to abandon all entertainment completely if they reject any show with a gay character.
Hiring a Deaf actress would have solved all that - but hiring a deaf one might not have. And the problem I always see with the question of having an " X actor play a Y character" is how much are we going to divide it up. I recall seeing complaints about a white actress playing a character with one Asian parent and one white parent , and most of the complaints said the part should have gone to an Asian actress - who would have been just as different from the character as the white actress.
OK. Then let me specify that they should hire a Deaf actress who is a first-language ASL speaker.
I have no answer to the Asian actress question, other than to wonder who is asking it, and why? Is the point simply that there are fewer roles for Asian actresses altogether, and here was one that could have been, so it should have been-- or was it the slightly sinister "to white people, full Asian, and biracial Asian-white people look pretty much the same, and are therefore interchangeable?