Playing it Straight

While Sean Penn’s recent Best Actor Oscar win for Milk helped bring Harvey Milk’s message to a wide audience — both from the increased visibility of the film and from Penn’s moving acceptance speech — the occasion marked another instance of a Hollywood tradition: a gay character played by a heterosexual actor.

Penn, like Tom Hanks (Philadelphia [1993]) and William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman [1985]) before him, was praised for his “bravery” for taking on the role and even — eek! — kissing another man.

Gay actors, on the other hand, get no such credit for playing gay roles; let’s not forget the year that Rupert Everett’s hilarious supporting turn in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) was ignored by the Academy, with the implication that queer thespians need merely show up to play queer characters, with no actual acting involved. (To add insult to injury, that same year saw Greg Kinnear getting a nod for his weak-sister performance as a gay-bashed artist in As Good As It Gets.)

That’s as ridiculous as the notion that openly gay actors can’t play straight roles because audiences won’t accept it. That might once have been true, but as more and more actors come out, it’s clear that they’re just as capable when it comes to playing straight guys.

We’ve put together a list of 11 noteworthy performances, in no particular order, by queer actors as heterosexuals, with a few ground rules in mind: First of all, everyone on this list is either openly gay or bisexual, or their sexuality became known after their death. Living closeted actors don’t count — not even that dancer who does those action movies.

Second, we could have done the whole list with Brits who have “Sir” attached to their names, but we wanted to mix it up. As such, we included one because of his tireless efforts to get more actors to come out. And finally, as with any list, some of your favorites probably won’t be included; do be so kind as to mention them in the comments.

All performances listed get a rating of one to five Steves, in honor of Steve McQueen, arguably the most heterosexual actor to ever set foot on the silver screen. As far as we know, anyway.

Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar movies

Between his self-parodying roles in the stoner comedies Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) and …Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) and his weekly turn as the womanizing Barney on How I Met Your Mother, Harris is shrewdly — and hilariously — shattering the paradigm for openly gay actors.

True, he wasn’t out yet when he signed on for White Castle or Mother, but did anyone think of this former child star and musical theater vet as a voracious woman-chaser? His stripper-chasing, substance-abusing cameos in the Harold and Kumar movies are brilliantly subversive and gut-bustingly funny.

5 Steves: When Neil tells the boys that the “P.H.” in his name stands for “poon handler,” you totally believe him.