Gay actors who don''t play straight convincingly

Stop trolling here, Ramin. You giant douche.

These characters are written as gay. Even Frasier himself comes across as a gay man. It's not an issue of casting, it's the writing.

Kelsey Grammer is a big ol' pussyhound and Bush supporter, OP.

Exercize in futility: trying to get a straight answer from DL.

Didn't you already publish this screed in Newsweek?

Someday most people will dispense with the facile idea that gay actors are not playing straight convincingly in an evolutionary leap similar to the one made by similar bigots when they realized that the gay actors they always assumed were too butch to be anything but straight actually loved men.

Rock Hudson anyone?

Sexuality is a lot less predictable than that suggested by the stereotypes so many subscribed to in the 1950s, and a lot less predictable than the stereotypes some, e.g. OP, still subscribe to might suggest.

Zac Efron

Dominic Monaghan

Hayden Christensen

Elijah Wood

Adrian Brody

It must be hard for gays to play straight roles, i am straight and i cant & will never play gay, because i will find it hard to kiss a man through acting,

Jon Cryer and DHP are far cries from Rock Hudson.

99% of them.

"It must be hard for gays to play straight roles, i am straight and i cant & will never play gay, because i will find it hard to kiss a man through acting"%0D %0D %0D %0D %0D What the hell is a homophobe like you doing on a gay board? Fuck off. Not all gay roles require you to kiss someone of the same sex, anyway.%0D %0D

I think OP might just be a stupid person who cannot articulate himself well. Those CHARACTERS seem gay, for sure. But it is funny, not "distracting." And this has been discussed for all the years those shows were on the air.

Neil Patrick Harris plays straight convincingly, so does Vin Diesel. Gay actors (most closeted) who can't play straight convincingly, are because they are bad actors, only good for the tabloids. See list above. Timothy Olyphant plays a gay guy quite convincingly. So it works both ways.

I was convinced that Niles loved Daphne, FWIW.

[quote]Those CHARACTERS seem gay, for sure. But it is funny, not "distracting." %0D %0D So, r12, the casting is an inside joke for the gay viewers?

Are you still here, OP? Don't you have to go pick up the kids and get dinner ready?

That guy on "Caroline In The City" wasn't very convincing, but I think that's because the character started out gay and then several seasons in they decided to make him straight. You don't suddenly give the bitchy Paul Lynde-like sidekick a hard-on for the female lead.

I own this thread!

I totally forgot about "Caroline in the City". I'm having a flashback.

I think it's hilarious when straight men pretend to be gay in movies. They always do an effeminate, excitable voice, the limp wrists, and cookie smelling face. Sometimes subtly, but they never act masculine, they act like girls.

Well I guess sometimes actors(gay or straight) play a gay guy that is supposed to be masculine, it always seems so badly acted. Like Heath and Jake in BBM. They were both bad and their attempts to come across like naturally rugged cowboys were laughable. Heath equates sounding constipated and using a stupid voice with being a tough guy.

[quote]Gay actors (most closeted) who can't play straight convincingly, are because they are bad actors

THANK YOU.

And I've seen plenty of straight guys do shitty jobs of playing gay (Joshua Jackson's painfully stiff performance - and not in the good way - in "Cruel Intentions" comes to mind). It's not like it doesn't happen in reverse.

It's about bad acting, not sexual orientation.

The guy that played Bull, the sports talk-show host, on "Frasier" was an openly gay actor and thereby disproves your idiotic argument, OP. Now please fuck off and die.

I thought Ledger equated sounding constipated with being way deep in the closet - as if the character's life was constipated in a sense.

I didn't say ALL gay actors, dickwad r22. I mentioned two actors who can't portray straight characters on their series convincingly.

I think the Alan Harper character in "Two and a Half Men" was written to come across as gay. They make several references in the show to him seeming gay. There was even an episode where he wondered himself if he might be gay and he tried kissing a guy.

R23, he's just a bad actor doing a bad voice. That's all.

What about Frasier's brother...is there a gay subtext to his character?

Remember the "gay" guy on "Veronica's Closet"? I remember that one of that bad show's (unintentional?) running jokes was that the character's sexuality was never determined. %0D %0D Remember how that show was semi-hot for a couple of years...and then died?

Wentworth?

I thought Jonathan Groff was convincing as a straight guy on Glee. I find the fat gay character on Modern Family convincing too and that actor is straight.

[quote]I thought Jonathan Groff was convincing as a straight guy on Glee.

He really wasn't. I watched his debut episode with 2 friends, and all 3 of us immediately assumed he was Kurt's new love interest.

Again, it was just plain bad acting.

I think Wentworth was plenty convincing on "Prison Break" and in "The Human Stain," though.

Niles was written as a finicky, fussy and effete snobby intellectual. DHP was great casting and he did an excellent job of bringing the character to life. It would have been character-inappropriate and humor crushing for him to try to interject butchness. The character Niles also happened to be straight, and viewers bought into his crush on Daphne. They have also bought into DHP as a fussy neurotic harmless little straight guy in love with a woman in Down With Love.%0D %0D Most straights automatically assume everyone slightly butcher than Richard Simmons is straight. The possibility of the actors playing straight characters being gay is not something straights are normally looking for and they aren't hyperconscious of signs of gayness like we can be.

John Goodman plays straight convincingly.

I thought Groff was convincing on the Pretty-Handsome pilot. He wasn't on Glee.

When Groff had to walk down the smoke-filled corridor in the Bad Reputation music video Rachel made, he did the flounciest walk. Cory Monteith and Mark Salling had to do the same bit (they were her three suitors), which underlined the campness of Groff's walk.

More...more gays who can't play it straight to save their acting careers.

I had no idea Groff was gay until that Newsweek article. He played straight convincingly to me.

John Barrowman and Sean Hayes. And it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. A bad actor is a bad actor.

And people wonder why gay actors don't come out.

We gay people analyze each other so relentlessly that we will always think that we cannot portray something 'other' well. But straight men are often not perceptive enough to know that they do not play gay men well either - we are forgiving of the things they get wrong in their portrayals, and their overconfidence in believe they can play us convinces the other remaining orientations.

[quote]We gay people analyze each other so relentlessly that we will always think that we cannot portray something 'other' well. %0D %0D Wrong. Rock and Wentworth portrayed "other" very well.%0D

Yeah, it's so wrong, R40, that we're not actually writing in a thread about that exact phenomenon right now.

R41, are you drunk, or just stupid?

I don't know, R40/R42, but I'm certainly more clever than you if that exasperated canned coment is all you can come up with.

I was going to post that "Hugo Weaving owns this thread" then I read that he's been w/ the same woman over 25yrs. WTF?

I never bought Hayden Christensens love scene in Star Wars. He squirms everytime his kisses a girl.

I agree that DHP played Niles beautifully...and straight. And, as in most shows where a couple that's been eyeing each other forever gets together, it lost a lot when Niles & Daphne actually had a relationship.

I love the Niles Crane character. Never fails to crack me up.

"Again, it was just plain bad acting."%0D %0D %0D %0D Um, no. You're just being an ass. He's a good actor, ask anyone who has seen him in the theater.%0D %0D %0D %0D "John Barrowman and Sean Hayes. And it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. A bad actor is a bad actor."%0D %0D %0D Yeah, Sean Hayes won an Emmy because of "bad acting." You people are such assholes. %0D %0D

"Most straights automatically assume everyone slightly butcher than Richard Simmons is straight"%0D %0D %0D %0D %0D Ding, ding, ding. It's hilarious that you all think guys like Barrowman and Hayes are so unconvincing as straight, because I know fangurls who SWORE that they were straight before they came out. Most straight people don't have great gaydar.

Gay men like Setoodeh are hypercritical of gay actors. Setoodeh is not a macho guy and it's pretty obvious where he developed his paranoia on the issue of passing. A gay individual who has spent years doing things like self-consciously monitoring his own run out of fear it could be too girly isn't going to view things through the lens of an average audience member and is likely to be over scrutinize gay actors.

[quote]Remember the "gay" guy on "Veronica's Closet"? I remember that one of that bad show's (unintentional?) running jokes was that the character's sexuality was never determined.%0D %0D That character's name was Josh Blair, played by Wallace Langham. On one of the episodes, Josh beds down Millicent, a lusty older woman played by Holland Taylor. After only one night of hot monkey sex, the following morning he awakens next to her to find her dead.%0D %0D In 1999, Langham was charged with one count of misdemeanor battery and one count of committing a hate crime. He agreed to a six-figure settlement with the reporter who accused him of an anti-gay hate crime.

I forgot to add that he's been married twice and has two children. Not that it means anything.

I suppose we would have said this about Tony Randall.

If Tony Randall had been gay.

But Tony Randall was not gay.

We'd also be saying this about Peter Sarsgaard.

But, hey, Peter Sarsgaard is straight.

So, here's the lesson:

It's all about expectations.

And closed mindedness.

And subscribing to stereotypes.

Object lesson:

Sean Hayes is perfectly cast, convincing, and great as C.C. Baxter.

But that asshole in Newsweek criticizes him for a lack of swagger in this straight role.

Granted, if a role required typical straight swagger, one would probably not cast Sean Hayes.

However, C.C. Baxter, the everyman boy next door created by Jack Lemmon (who would most likely also not have been cast in a role requiring typical straight swagger, notwithstanding that he was straight) has about as much to do with the concept of archtypal straight swagger as Ennis Del Mar has to do with the concept of archtypal gay swish.

Who was often cast as that archtypal straight swaggering dude.

That would have been Rock Hudson, often with straight Tony Randall as his less swaggering sidekick.

So let's just put this one to bed.

[quote] Yeah, Sean Hayes won an Emmy because of "bad acting." You people are such assholes. %0D %0D Didn't he win an emmy for playing a GAY role??%0D Sorry but he's a shitty actor... I've SEEN Promises Promises. But hey, thats just my opinion so no need for name calling.

"Didn't he win an emmy for playing a GAY role?? Sorry but he's a shitty actor... I've SEEN Promises Promises. But hey, thats just my opinion so no need for name calling."%0D %0D %0D %0D %0D But it's okay for you to call Sean Hayes names? Sorry, but to get work on the stage you generally have to be a good actor. Sean Hayes and John Barrowman get work on the stage because they are good actors. %0D %0D

NPH

NPH plays a better straight than a gay

Jim Parsons totally owns this thread, yet Sheldon is so well written as an annoying oddball, that Parson's mannerisms and effeminacy have only contributed to his amassing millions and an impressive collection of Emmys.

R55: If John Barrowman is so great, why did that stealth anti-gay NBC minstrel show pass him over in the role of a gay man for some breeder hoser who sucked as Harold Hill?

R17, I agree, but "The Nanny" did just that (not the lead, but same difference), and the straight audience still didn't seem to think it strange. R32 is absolutely right. To me that plot was always just a bit too preposterous, even for a breezy, lightweight show like that..

I didn't really follow "Frasier" religiously, but its straight Niles I found easier to buy.

R11 The kissing argument makes zero sense anyway. If you aren't attracted to the person you are kissing, their sex or gender are irrelevant, you aren't atrracted so you have to act it out.

R44 Bisexual people still exist, if anyone's going to base acting on sexuality.

Chris Pine never seems straight and of course Tammy Cruise in any Love scene

Tyler Perry.

Nolan Gould

r53: put your own bad self to bed

I can see that someone mentioned Jonathan Groff. He played straight in Mindhunter and he was convincing.

Chace Crawford

James Corden

Almost 70 posts in and you QUEENS didn’t mention ME?

Oh I forgot about Tony Randall. Can you really picture him giving the business to a vagina?

Also, I just rewatched “The Jeffersons”. Seems Roxie Roker and the Lionel actor were the only straight actors on that show? Holy shit. As a kid, I did think that Louise was a little... clunky. But watching it as an adult cracked me up.

George Clooney. Seriously. He looked at Michelle Pffeifer like she was a box of eggs that gone past their use by date.

Miss Bomer never played straight convincingly to me . I could smell the cookies through his white collar . Thing is , straight friends both male and female never believed me when I told them he was gay and married to a man. Like they don’t believe me with Hugh JackmeOff etc . I don’t get some people’s gaydar at times . Think they’re just wrapped up in the fantasy.

Neither Boomer nor Groff. Sometimes Quinto cannot convince me either. But British actors seem more capable of it - Armitage, Evans, Pace - they all have performed convincing straight roles.

Maybe it is just that some actors have more difficulty hiding their mannerisms than others.

R67 He was the least convincing straight character on the show. Should have left out the girlfriend and then I might have been able to suspend disbelief.

Groff is playing a straight guy on Mindhunter and he's pretty convincing. He has a lot of hetero sex scenes and you're lying to yourself if you don't think they're hot.

John Mahoney's gay and he was completely convincing as a Frasier's straight dad. There are different aspects to acting--David Hyde Pierce has impeccable comic timing time and a good sense of physical comedy--but I always thought part of the joke of his character on Frasier is that he wasn't really convincing as a straight guy--his wife was invisible and his love for Daphne was much more believable unconsummated. It was very 1930s comedy.

Some actors are good at passing--I always bought Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as lesbians in Bound, but a lot of straight actors and actresses are awkward in gay roles--though they're better than they used to be. Gay actors generally do better at playing, but a lot of actors tense up a bit in love scenes. I suspect a fair number of them rely on having some genuine physical attraction to be convincing in them. If there is none and the partner's not their preferred gender, it's harder.

Actors with good imaginations and the ability to really commit physically to what they're doing can make love to a wall (of either gender)--classic example is Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive.

NPH does not play straight convincingly, sorry.

 

R76 Maybe to the fraus who fantasize over gay actors having straight sex, however to the rest of us, it was a joke.

I didn't check out Big Bang until well into the 3rd or 4th season. Parsons hadn'd come out yet and I was astonished. The top rated show in the country and nobody was mentioning the lead was flaming.

I'm still upset that they made Sheldon straight. I was ok with him being asexual.

^ Sorry, hadn't, not hadn'd.

Cheyenne Jackson. I immediately knew he was gay the first time I saw him, when he was playing a straight guy on 30 Rock who makes out with Tina Fey's character.

I own this thread.

I agree with the guys who named Parsons as well.

I love the people who think getting an Emmy or an Oscar proves an actor is good or a film is great.

Quinto can play straight quite convincing r74.

The Slap was terrible but he was great as that douchey straight guy.

Str8 is a lie and is therefore not something anyone should be forced to play on or off the stage or the screen.

I didn't get a hint of gay from Quinto on Heroes.

Agree with R88, Quinto was very convincing as the hetero douche on The Slap.

He's Italian. He's likely had some practice.

Ian McKellen as Gandalf.

There have always been rumors about Brent Spiner, who played the android Data in ST:TNG. He has a wife (or girlfriend or partner; nobody seems to know for sure) named Lori McBride and a teenage son, which of course means nothing. But he has absolutely zero chemistry with actresses. And although he mentions his son frequently he NEVER mentions his wife/girlfriend/whatever. During one of those question and answer sessions at a Star Trek convention somebody asked him if he was single and he said one word: no. It all seems kind of odd.

Agree with R88 and R91 re: The Slap and Quinto

Speaking of douchey guys, NPH was fine on that sitcom How I Met Your Mother

[quote] Miss Bomer

Fuck you, R73.

Russell Tovey does not give off a hint of gayness, very masculine and straight-seeming.

What's in r94?

Danny Pintauro is such a bad actor he can't even play gay convincingly, never mind having to play a str8 dork on a bad (but paradoxically highly rated) 1980s sitcom and failing miserably on a show full of miscast actors. For ABC to inflict both him and arch-homophobe Kirk Cameron on America on Tuesday nights constitutes a war crime for which America is still owed reparations.

I love our DLEGs like R99. It truly is as if the 28 years from 1990 to 2018 never happened.

[quote] I love our DLEGs like [R99]. It truly is as if the 28 years from 1990 to 2018 never happened.

Eldergay? He's older than me! He still can't act.

Eldergay is a state of mind R101, not a chronological thing.

[quote]It truly is as if the 28 years from 1990 to 2018 never happened.

I wish the dumbing down of popular culture had never happened.

I wish the el-jibbity-ization of gay culture and activism had never happened.

I wish the rampant obesity deliberately caused by government complicity in the junk food industry's malfeasance had never happened.

[quote] el-jibbity-ization of gay culture and activism

Typo?

What does that mean?

I love him, but I'm gonna have to say Tommy DiDario. He has a short acting reel on youtube

[quote]What does that mean?

It means I'm tired of seeing gay culture simultaneously attacked and usurped by wolves in sheep's clothing, so to speak.

Even more lost by that explanation R106

What does el-jibbity mean? Or was that a typo?

I will not type out that vile acronym that exists for no other reason than to marginalize and erase gay people.

ROTFLMAO -- that's fucking hilarious R108

I know you don't intend it to be, but it is.

I will never see those four letters in the same way again.

Richard Cox in HELLHOLE (1987 with Virginia Madsen)...not very convincing.