The NY Times: Is the closet door widening in Hollywood?

David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris on the Emmy Awards red carpet

Is being an out gay actor still an issue in Hollywood? Gay actors like Neil Patrick Harris and TR Knight are currently flourishing on television and testing the boundaries of that age-old argument, but will we ever have an openly gay star on the level of a Tom Cruise or Will Smith?

That’s the topic at hand in an article that appeared in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times that takes an in-depth look at the changing landscape for gay actors in Hollywood. Much has been made about the recent GLAAD report that found over 80 LGBT characters on television for the fall season, and even though a great deal of them play second fiddle to the straight leads, their presence still represents a dramatic change in the approach to being an out actor.

Gay publicist Howard Brageman is quoted as saying “We’ve gone from the revolution to the evolution”, and while that is in some ways true, Hollywood still has a great deal of evolving to do. Gays in the media now are arguably as visible as we’ve been at any other time in history, but the “revolution” doesn’t seem to extend beyond television. While television stars like Harris and Knight can play straight characters by day and walk the red carpet with their partners at night, that luxury doesn’t seem to extend to their movie-star counterparts. Internet chatter and innuendo on some of our big stars is deafening, yet we’ve still yet to see one take the next step and come out.

We are still, in the words of USC media professional Larry Gross, “Waiting for the Jackie Robinson moment”. Whether or not this moment ever truly comes is a question that won’t be answered for some time, but the article also highlights some promising new developments surrounding young actors like Fringe’s Jasika Nicole, who are defying the closet and maintaining successful careers. 

                                                     Out Noah's Arc star Daryl Stephens

The question really isn’t whether or not there are gay actors in Hollywood (anyone who has ever had any interaction with theatre geeks knows that it’s nearly impossible for all those ‘mos to get lost in translation on the way to the Walk of Fame), but rather when they will start to take their tentative steps out of the closet.

Three of our most well-known out actors (Harris, Knight, and Chad Allen) were outed or nearly outed by some form of tabloid intervention, so their coming out (while honorable and noteworthy) was less bold than, say, an actor who did so with no provocation while promoting a $100 million movie which bore his name above the title.

The first steps out of the closet from actors like the aforementioned as well as now officially out Noah’s Arc actor Daryl Stephens serve to show that the closet foundation is rattling, but the movement is still waiting for a big, splashy movie-star pioneer to open the door to the future of openly-gay actors in Hollywood.

Of course, we follow this topic rather closely here day-to-day, so the article wasn't much of a bombshell. Did anyone catch the article and have any thoughts? Share in the comments!