Playing it straight: should gay roles be reserved for gay actors?

From Freddie Mercury to Queen Anne, awards season is set to be dominated by queer characters played by non-LGBT performers. So is this sexuality’s equivalent of blackface – or is it simply acting?

It is 1992. A young actor named Will Smith, already a famous rapper and sitcom star, is nervous about his first big film role, as a gay con artist in Six Degrees of Separation. It’s a part that requires him to kiss a man, so he calls his friend Denzel Washington, who tells him: “If you don’t feel comfortable about it, don’t do it.” (That’s Washington’s recollection. Less charitable reports have him telling Smith squarely: “Don’t you be kissing no man.”) In the finished film, there is no kiss – at least not in full view of the camera – and Smith later says he regrets not giving his all for fear that it would harm his career.

Being openly gay has done nothing but restrict my career. I live in a cultural ghetto

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ClxaDy

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