The first time I remember knowing an actor was gay was Neil Patrick Harris. My family would sit and watch How I Met Your Mother together, when I was certainly too young to be watching it. One night my older brother announces to me that the guy who plays Barney is gay. ‘That’s cool’, I had told my brother, I also watched Torchwood with my family and due to Jack Harkness and Ianto, I proudly knew what being gay meant.
However, it wasn’t until I was a lot older that I understood how important it is for LGBTQ people to have representation on the big screen. I was fourteen and struggling to come with terms with my own bisexuality when Ellen Page came out, I was also fourteen and obsessed with Inception. It’s really empowering to see people like you in the media, to see that no matter anyone’s sexuality they can do what they dream of.
Ian Mckellen has been publicly out since 1988 and has been doing activism work ever since, Kristin Stewart talks about being gay more than her appearance in the Twilight franchise and Neil Patrick Harris does yearly support videos for national coming out day.
As someone who likes Broadway I can tell you that there’s no shortage of gay actors there. In fact, current Broadway musical The in the Band stars Jim Parsons, Andrew Rannells, Zachary Quinto and Matt Boomer who are all publicly out. However, LGBTQ+ actors may still struggle to find work – in 28 states in America it’s still legal for workers to be fired due to their sexual orientation- and this shouldn’t be the case in 2020.
The issue of lack of representation for gay actors really comes into light when you look at the Oscars, as of 2019 a grand total of 25 actors had been nominated for playing an LGBTQ+ role (Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain to name a few) and out of those 25 nominees not a single one of them was openly LGBT.
Personally, I’m beyond thankful for the LGBTQ+ representation that we do have in actors across the world and I only hope it grows in the future.
Queer as Film 