Recent Posts
Are you a woman who is fascinated by actors’ performances in hit movies? As moviegoers, it’s easy to distinguish between an actor’s real life endeavors and the characters they play on screen. We know that the actor who plays superman can’t actually fly, for instance, but not all of us can detect the gaydar (or straightdar) of an actor on the big screen.
Here are eight actors who played characters so convincingly gay/straight, you might be surprised they aren’t in real life.
We’re all aware that Robin Williams was not gay. But his performance in “The Birdcage” was so striking you’d hardly know it. In this movie, he plays a drag club owner whose partner, Nathan Lane, is the star of the show. Hilarity (obviously) ensues.
In “Sex and the City,” Cynthia Nixon plays the intelligent Miranda Hobbes who marries bartender Steve. In real life, she is married to her partner, Christine Marioni.
In a television series that epitomized the nuclear family, “The Brady Bunch,” its leading man was less than archetypal in real life. Robert Reed kept his sexuality a secret until his death in 1992.
NPH has been openly gay for years, but onscreen, he thrills with his straight performances, including the painfully straight Desi Collings in “Gone Girl.” He and his husband David Burkta have been happily married since 2014.
Alongside Michael Douglas, Matt Damon is brilliant in “Behind the Candelabra” as Liberace’s on-again, off-again lover. The HBO film won multiple Emmy awards in 2014.
If his incredible performance in “I Am Sam” wasn’t indication enough, Sean Penn is an absolute pro at playing characters he does not resemble. In the 2008 biopic “Milk,” Penn’s performance as the first openly gay man to hold public office in California won him an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Every millennial woman’s first crush, the late Heath Ledger was straight as an arrow playing opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, also everyone’s crush and also not gay, in “Brokeback Mountain.” Gyllenhaal told Out (via People) that his late costar was deeply involved with LGBTQ issues outside of the film as well. “He was extraordinarily serious about the political issues surrounding the movie when it came out,” Gyllenhaal said.
In her extensive career, Jodie Foster played several straight roles, most notably Clarice Starling in the cult classic, “Silence of the Lambs.” She came out at the 2013 Golden Globes and married her partner, Alexandra Hedison, in 2014.
