When 1982's groundbreaking Making Love was cast, top Hollywood actors Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas and Richard Gere allegedly turned down the male lead, afraid of being linked to a romantic gay drama.

Eventually settling on three B-list television stars Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson and Harry Hamlin, the film about a closeted L.A. doctor in an unfulfilling marriage, who finds the strength to “come out” from a promiscuous novelist, was less praised for its performances and more for being the first Hollywood film to treat gay relationships truthfully.

As a testament to our changing times, Focus Features’s upcoming film Brokeback Mountain, which reportedly treats gay romance in a similarly honest manner, features two accomplished straight actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

Directed by Academy-Award winner Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) based on an E. Annie Proulx’s short story, the film traces the enduring love story of rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) who meet as shepherds in the Wyoming grasslands in 1963, but soon form a lasting, more-than-friends relationship over the next 20 years.

According to reports, popular actors including Billy Crudup, Colin Farrell and Josh Hartnett also vied for the parts, which demand some passionate big-screen lip-locking.

Once avoiding gay roles, both up-and-comers and long-established actors are mirroring a greater understanding of homosexuality off-screen by playing more evolved queer characters on-screen.

From Russell Crowe’s gay portrayal in Geoff Burton’s The Sum of Us (1994) to Home Improvement’s Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Third Rock From The Sun’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt and 7th Heaven’s David Gallagher’s gay roles in Nickolas Perry’s Speedway Junky (1999), Grek Arake’s Mysterious Skin (2004) and Duncan Roy’s soon-to-be-released The Portrait of Dorian Gray (2005), respectively, it's now becoming more acceptable for hetero-heart-thobs to switch-hit on film.

This past year, even greater Hollywood heavyweights with more picking and choosing power, have agreed to go gay on film, from Johnny Depp’s portrayal of bisexual 17th Century poet John Wilmot in The Libertine to Liam Neeson’s simulation of the bisexual statistician in Kinsey to the depiction of gay songster Cole Porter by Kevin Kline--who already played gay in 1997's In & Out--in De-Lovely.

But for every step we take, we go back a few when certain gay-for-pay actors, fearing speculation over their sexual identities could lead to criticism and fan losses, often renounce their queer roles in interviews.