Actor Hugh Dancy on Playing Gay And Why the "Actor's Closet" still remains

British actor Hugh Dancy has been lighting up the stage and screen for over a decade, and with his performances in such films as Adam and Ella Enchanted, we're proud to say that we fancy Dancy! (Okay, that was horrible. My apologies, and I have to wonder how many times he's heard that).

He's currently starring Off-Broadway in the play The Pride, in which he plays two incarnations of a gay man, one in 1958 and the other in 2008. Timeout.com interviewed Hugh, and he had some interesting things to say about the closet ...

T.O: The closet is being dismantled in a lot of places these days, but it is still in force for many actors.
H.D.: It still seems to overwhelm people’s sense of the rest of your identity. If an actor is gay, then they are a “gay actor.” It’s not like being a blond actor or a very short actor—those things can be dealt with in people’s imaginations. And there is this strange cultural obsession, this eagerness to unmask people.

And about gay rumors ...

You have had to deal with a few such rumors yourself.
You could spend your whole life just trying to clear up other people’s perceptions of you, but it would be a great big waste of time. I just can’t bring myself to care very much. It’s a kind of self-preservation: You cannot hope to control what other people think or say about you.

With wife Claire Danes

And about outing ...

Outing used to be largely about conservatives going after supposed subversives; now it’s often gay people calling out people who they feel are not being subversive enough.
Yes: that they’re hiding, that they’re sacrificing the greater good for the sake of their careers. It’s a subject that people are incredibly passionate about. But when I read this play, that’s not what grabbed me about it; it’s all there, but I didn’t think, Oh, fantastic. It’ll be so interesting to get into sexual politics. I just thought that this one man – and the construct and lies that he’s created for himself - would be very rewarding to examine. Maybe some people will feel we’re not making the right argument on behalf of gay rights or whatever. But I’d like to think we’ve all got beyond that.

You can read the entire interview over at Timeout.com, including his thoughts on playing a gay men in two different eras.