Stanley Tucci: It’s ‘fine’ for straight actors to play gay: ‘That’s the whole point’
nypost.comBBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs” show and said, “I am always very flattered when gay men come up to me and talk to me about ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ or they talk about ‘Supernova.’ ” He continued: “They say that, ‘It was just so beautiful,’ you know, ‘You did it the right way.’ Because often, it’s not done the right way.“An actor is an actor is an actor.
You’re supposed to play different people. You just are. That’s the whole point of it.”While Tucci believes that straight performers can take on LGBTQ roles as long as it’s being done correctly, he thinks that it becomes an issue if the character is a stereotype or caricature.Many entertainers have taken gay parts — despite being heterosexual.
Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara portrayed lovers in 2015’s “Carol.” Benedict Cumberbatch played queer mathematician Alan Turing in 2014’s “The Imitation Game.” Both Blanchett, 54, and Cumberbatch, 46, received Oscar nominations for their respective roles and earned much critical acclaim.
Tom Hanks even scored a golden statuette for playing a homosexual lawyer with AIDS in the 1993 legal drama “Philadelphia.”The “Forrest Gump” alum, 66, touched upon the subject in an interview with the New York Times Magazine last year.His views differ from Tucci’s statements, admitting that straight men could not in fact play characters written to be LGBTQ.“Let’s address ‘could a straight man do what I did in “Philadelphia” now?’ No, and rightly so,” Hanks said at the time. “The whole point of ‘Philadelphia’ was don’t be afraid.” He continued: “One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man.
