Has it really got easier to be an LGBTQ+ actor?
GAY TIMES speaks to industry insiders about the issues facing queer actors today – from pressure to conceal their identity to workplace micro-aggressions.
WORDS BY JAMIE WINDUST Decades before Noah Centineo and Nicholas Galitzine started enchanting tweens with their chiselled cheekbones, the Hollywood heartthrob of the day was an Illinois native by the name of Roy Harold Scherer Jr. – or, as you might know him, Rock Hudson.
Beloved for his all-American good looks and the mischievous glint in his eye, he smooth-talked his way through rom-coms with Doris Day to become one of the most popular actors of the 1950s and 1960s.
As far as film studios were concerned, Hudson’s biggest asset was his sex appeal to female audiences. As a result of this and the prevailing homophobic attitudes of the day, the star’s agent Henry Willson went to great lengths to cover up Hudson’s queer identity, even spilling secrets about his other clients to the press in order to avoid the actor being outed in the papers.
