What gay actors couldn’t play straight, convincingly?

Sean Hayes.

Liberace in Sincerely Yours

Lance Bass in On the Line

Bowen Yang in every single SNL skit where he has to play straight. I mean it is physically impossible for this person to emulate a straight man.

—Tom Cruise?

OP, Dan Butler was convincing as the sex-crazed Bulldog. You're way off.

Clifton Webb and Paul Lynde came immediately to mind, but after reflecting a bit I realized that I knew about their sexuality early on, and that always colors your perceptions. I'm sure I could find some decent performances where an ignorant modern viewer would buy either as straight.

More interesting to me: What STRAIGHT actors couldn't play straight convincingly? Don Knotts? Nicholas Galitzine? Zac Effron? Darren Criss?

R5, I don't really watch Frasier but when I've seen Dan on the show he comes across as a parody of a straight guy. He's too OTT. Same goes for Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother, or maybe he just comes across like a conceited douche which knows no sexuality.

Kevin Spacey, IMO. When I saw him in LA Confidential, he was pinging and I'm not sure his character was supposed to be gay.

Clifton Webb wasn't really effeminate onscreen (except in The Razor's Edge, where he played it up, and somewhat in Laura). He was more waspish, which a straight man can be. I believed him in Titanic and Three Coins In The Fountain. I think he wouldn't have been cast in these roles if he wasn't believable. He had an authoritative quality that read as masculine. Borderline gay but didn't go over.

Though he's forgotten, I find that in everything I've seen Laird Cregar in, he screams gay.

Charles Nelson Reilly in Hello Dolly? Didn't see it.

Roddy McDowall in his later teen years playing a boy in love with Jane Powell was not convincing.

David Hyde Pierce.

Peter Allen (okay, married "entertainer").

Malcolm Gets in "Caroline in the City." Malcolm is a very talented guy but I never bought Richard as straight for one second.

Jodie Foster

Patsy Kelly, if we're talking women.

I actually still don't believe that Dan Butler is gay.

Well, he's married to a guy, R17 so maybe someone should tell his husband. Don't let him hear it on the street.

I'll add Kristin Stewart, but I haven't seen her in much, so I don't know if she is believable in straight roles. I do know she can't act - gay, straight or whatever.

Reverse effect: I thought Michael Douglas was terrible at playing Liberace — he didn't have the mannerisms, the looks — but most of all he read as a straight gay trying way too hard to play gay.

I'll flip yours R19 and add Angie Harmon. A straight actress who can't play straight. She is the gayest acting straight actress ever.

The only on screen sexual chemistry he had was with me..

You rang.

R8, I figured Spacey was gay from the first time I saw him, which was in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). It's his voice, or rather his vocal mannerisms.

R23, You THINK that, do you? DO. YOU?

Anthony Perkins secretly peeping in on Janet Leigh undressing in “Psycho.” I was thinking to myself “um, sure.”

Matt Damon! F**

R25, I was about to mention Perkins...

Paul Bartel was more a director/writer than an actor, but as the husband to Mary Woronov in "Eating Raoul" he was about as convincing as the special effects in "Death Race 2000".

I think NPH was actually very convincing on HMYM. Sexy ass but straight Josh Radnor ping to me. I just knew he was family.

Ellen in Mr. Wrong.

Okay, r29 won!

Hugh Jackman

R25 I didn't think Norman was particularly looking at her with horny intentions.

R29 - I actually loved that film. I thought Joan Cusack was a riot and Bill Pullman was really good.

r32 Well, does it count if he was contemplating how she would look mounted?

I just love a pretty girl with great hair. Oh, right, and big titties. And even though I am a flamboyant, fussy, single man in 1970s-80s San Francisco, I am so lusting after what's-her-name, the blonde bimbo downstairs.

R35 - yeah, he was flaming, but I thought Monroe was HOT. And he was!

He was too goofy and nelly for my taste, but objectively good looking and he did have a hairy chest. He was oddly high-waisted.

Saw him one night in the mid 90s at Marie's Crisis in NYC sitting with a friend. Meh.

Im still convinced john ritter was gay

[quote]Charles Nelson Reilly in Hello Dolly? Didn't see it.

He was fabulous as Ermengarde Vandergelder. Two curtain calls.

There was a short-lived sitcom called [italic]Encore! Encore![/italic], starring Nathan Lane and Joan Plowright. In one episode, he chased a woman around a bed, hoping to screw her. I screamed "OMG! They [bold]really[/bold] expect me to buy into this!" at the idea of him such a horny heterosexual.

R40, that reminds me of the time he and Rosie O'Donnell hosted a pre-show Tonys (the first hour) on PBS. He made a gay joke, and it fell flat. He then looked at Rosie and did the "over their heads" motion about the joke and she agreed. He actually thought the audience did not know he and Rosie were gay. Delusional. I'm sure anyone who remembers this could tell it better, but you get the gist.

Ellen Degenerate.

[quote] Im still convinced john ritter was gay

Wish, because he was a hottie. His son Jason even more so. But neither one ever pinged for me. Ironically, he didn't play gay (as Jack Tripper) at all convincingly but that might be more because it was such a sophomoric sitcom in the 70s. Billy Crystal as Jodie Campbell also wasn't at all believable.

Malcolm Gets in "Caroline in the City." Malcolm is a very talented guy but I never bought Richard as straight for one second.

[quote]From what I've read over the years, he hated playing that part, and it shows. So damn awkward.

Dan Levy could not play a straight deaf mute.

Alec Mapa. Hellen Keller would tap out "Who's the fag?" in sign language on somebody's hand if he walked into the room.

Agree about Dan Levy

R43 He pinged for me before I even knew what pinged meant.

I felt that Jack Tripper was gay.

Timothy Chalamet. I don't understand how he has the career he has.

TIMOTHEE!!

R50 - He can suck an oyster out of its shell without cracking it open, and he swallows. Il suit un régime riche en protéines...

Robert Reed

R14 and R44: thought the show was boring, but watched it for Hot AF Gets.

Richard Simmons was originally cast as Stanley Kowalski in Street Car but he kept reading Blanche's lines.

I call bullshit! Lucy was cast as Stanley but I made her turn it down.

Edward Everett Horton managed to play married men very convincingly while still being very nelly.

Matt Bomer.

Alan Sues of Laugh-In fame was cast in straight roles during the 1960s and 70s. WHY???

Who, or what role, is the openly gay "gold standard" for playing straight? Andrew Scott as "Hot Priest" in FLEABAG?

[quote]Who, or what role, is the openly gay "gold standard" for playing straight?

Bruce Jenner in "Can't Stop The Music."

Bless his heart but Danny Pintauro. I always thought it was so cruel the Who’s The Boss writers tried turning him into a straight horndog in his teen years on the show.

R62, same goes for Glenn Scarpelli from One Day at a time fame.

R50: They have to stop putting him in romantic roles. He has zero on-screen chemistry with women.

Did anyone see Don't Look Up? Timothée shared a few kissing scenes with Jennifer Lawrence. They looked rather awkward.

The first scene looks as if she's trying to re-animate a corpse and during the second scene, he's very enthusiastic to the point Jennifer has to rein him in order to move the scene along. I don't know if she was amused or annoyed by his technique, but something was going on there.

R60, Rock Hudson

"Did anyone see Don't Look Up? Timothée shared a few kissing scenes with Jennifer Lawrence. They looked rather awkward."

She's a dyke, for crying out loud.

67 replies and nobody has mentioned Jm J. Bullock???

R67, when you sober up and re-read your post, you're going to see how ridiculous you sound.

My neighbor

Jack Weston. Ugh.

I always though Spacey was sexy in some of his roles and even fantasized about him as a straight woman. He had me fooled for awhile but in hindsight he was perhaps trying a little too hard.

Ellen D for SURE

Lots. We just don’t know who they all are!

[quote] Who, or what role, is the openly gay "gold standard" for playing straight? Andrew Scott as "Hot Priest" in FLEABAG?

Possibly, though Luke McFarlane has a long list of TV movie romances where he played believable straight men.

Back before he was openly gay Matt Bomer did pretty well as a dashing cad on White Collar. Of course, he's become considerably less masculine both onscreen and off since coming out.

Durk Bogarde was pretty believably straight in "The Night Porter"

Have seen Jonathan Bailey, Luke Evans, and Luke MacFarlane in straight roles and found them believable

Paul W. Downs

John Mahoney was believable as a straight guy on Frasier

R72 wow that’s a first I ever heard that.

Maybe it was American Beauty. A lot of women got into that movie.

[quote]Who, or what role, is the openly gay "gold standard" for playing straight?

I was also going to mention Luke McFarlane

Years ago, before he was exposed as a predator and then came out, Spacey had his own cabal of "Leave him alone, he's straight!" fangirls here.

r53 Especially in a perm. As a young boy, I wondered what was going on with him. Was his sudden perm ever addressed on The Brady Bunch?

[quote]OP, Dan Butler was convincing as the sex-crazed Bulldog. You're way off.

Dan Butler wasn't the one who screamed "gay" on that series. I like David Hyde Pierce as an actor, but he was in no way believable playing straight Niles Crane. His long-simmering passionate love for Daphne was unconvincing, to say the least.

Some of you are just naming gay actors.

R81 it was AB as well as well as The Life of David Gale.

Timothee

Leo

Bradley

Chris Pine

Eddie Redmayne

[quote]His long-simmering passionate love for Daphne was unconvincing, to say the least.

Within the "universe" of that sitcom and the context of Niles's bookish, shy, neurotic, fastidious persona, it sort of made sense and was endearing. In a dramatic movie, NO.

Yes! Luke Evans in numerous roles, including the schlocky but fun "The Alienist."

Andrew Scott was skilled enough to use his "best-mates" platonic chemistry and great personal rapport with Phoebe Waller-Bridge (two people who genuinely like each other) and made the viewer feel it was romantic chemistry.

Rock Hudson should be mentioned more. He managed to have great chemistry with both Liz Taylor in Giant and of course the Doris Day films.

That guy who played the butler on The Nanny, it was so awkward watching him and Lauren Lane pretend to be hot for each other...

I think butler Niles and CC Capwell worked in a sort of "He's not gay, just British" sort of way. Even if he*was* flaming (and made no attempt to hide it), it was all part of the campy fun, and as the viewer you were in on the joke. Sitcoms are different from drama anyway, and The Nanny was pretty much a cartoon.

R93, add to the fact Fran Drescher couldn't stop staring into the camera. Sorry for the OT comment, but I will say her husband was pretty good at playing straight for a number of years.

Luke Evans plays straight quite well. Haters.

[quote]Andrew Scott was skilled enough to use his "best-mates" platonic chemistry and great personal rapport with Phoebe Waller-Bridge (two people who genuinely like each other) and made the viewer feel it was romantic chemistry.

Sadly Richard Madden and Gemma Chan weren't able to do likewise in [italic]Eternals[/italic], though I think he's a good actor in general and she... seems nice, I guess.

Richard Madden is believable as straight to me

When I watched Frasier during its original run, Dan Butler pinged gay to me more than David Hyde Pierce. Butler was very animated and spoke in a somewhat high-pitched voice. Occasionally, he would wiggle a body part. I wasn't surprised when he came out years later.

DHP seemed more quiet and nerdy than gay to me. He played Niles mostly deadpan, including how he moved his body. His cultured tastes mirrored those of Frasier, so they didn't stand out as gayish anymore than they did for Frasier/Kelsey Grammer. So, I was somewhat surprised (but happy) when DHP came out.

I don't know if it was ever clear if John Mahoney was straight or a closeted gay man. All I know is I laughed harder and longer at his lines than any other character. He had a fantastic way of delivering sarcastic lines about his sons or situations, and what I've realized is it was almost like a gay male character’s snippy delivery that made it so funny to me.

R71

Jack Weston was gay?

[quote]Jack Weston was gay?

I beg to differ.

Billy de Wolfe couldn't play straight if someone put a gun to his head.

[quote]Was his sudden perm ever addressed on The Brady Bunch?

In a "very special episode."

I thought Matt Bomer was believable as a straight father who was estranged from his son in the 2017 movie Walkiing Out.

Matt Bomer isn't even believable as Matt Bomer

[quote]Richard Madden is believable as straight to me

Oh, I agree he can absolutely pull it off, and has. Ikaris didn't read as gay, he just had no romantic chemistry with Gemma Chan's character when the narrative was supposed to be some millennia-long love affair between the two.

Dennis Christopher, despite his giant cock.

Fraus who think they have "gaydar" about guys "pinging" who are screaming queens or have been out for years....

Do straight men have bigger cocks?

Nope

R98, your assessment of "Frasier" is spot-on. Well said.

Adding some support for Dan Butler here. He’s short with terrier-like comic energy. If that reads as “gay” to some of you, it’s butch gay, which is fucking hot. I really wanted to fuck him after watching that clip. You know he’d curse like a truck driver while getting plowed.

[quote][R53] Especially in a perm. As a young boy, I wondered what was going on with him. Was his sudden perm ever addressed on The Brady Bunch?

No. But they should have said that he went to the same hairdresser that sold that black wig to Jan. 😆

There’s an episode of Love American Style where Robert Reed plays a swinger. He’s pushing to swap couples more in a way that he wants to do the woman’s hair rather than have sex with her.

Robert Reed as a straight swinger. The1970s fashion didn’t help.

I remember Florence Henderson said in an interview that RR would get really nervous during their bed scenes on TBB where literally nothing happened but quick goodnight pecks....always sounded kind of ridiculous and wondered if she wasn't reading into things. Its not like they were asking him to plow her in front of the cameras.

[quote]I remember Florence Henderson said in an interview that RR would get really nervous during their bed scenes on TBB

She got crabs from having sex with the mayor of NYC!

I want RuPaul Charles cast as womanizing detective in a rated-R thriller/mystery film!

We all know it would SMASH at the box office grossing over 1.7 Billion WW.

These two would rather drown than fuck.

R4 Tom Cruise was incredible with Vanessa Redgrave though. Who never struck me as particularly straight was Daniel Craig.

Jonathan Groff

Ben Platt

Dan Levy

Joe Locke

Mayor Ed Koch on Gimme A Break.

R118, Craig was pretty convincing as James Bond.

RDJ is an excellent actor but never seemed convincingly interested in sex at all.

R120 - Did Nell share her coke stash with Ed? Did Ed make a play for the Lawrence brothers?

Noel Coward

Sybil Thorndyke for reasons that should be obvious.

"RDJ is an excellent actor but never seemed convincingly interested in sex at all."

I feel the same way about Robert Deniro. Amazing actor , obviously, absolutely stunningly handsome, but I don't once remember him playing a sexy character...not saying he came/comes off gay (like his dad) but he's very low on sexual energy on screen. Which is a shame because he was so good looking

Grady Sutton.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Tony Randall! You guys are slipping.

Ben Affleck. He’s had more dick in him than a sperm bank at the end of the month. Yet, he tries so hard to, well, stay hard when it comes to pleasing a woman.

[quote] I feel the same way about Robert Deniro. Amazing actor , obviously, absolutely stunningly handsome

Robert DeNiro??

At his best, DeNiro had a B&T/rough trade cuteness about him. But that was 50 years ago. And no, never stunningly handsome.

He wasn't bad-looking back in his Raging Bull and Taxi Driver days, but stunningly handsome does seem a bit much.

You guys have shit taste

While I would never otherwise compare RDJ and DeNiro, they both had a "blink and you'll miss me quality" that was hard to pin down. RDJ was gregarious and flamboyant and DeNiro was pretty much the opposite, but there was something damaged and fragile and faun-like and haunting about them both. I think they word "fey" is often misunderstood, but it seems to refer to the quality I'm talking about

This not not translate necessarily into sexual energy.

James Coco in anything.

[quote]I think they word "fey" is often misunderstood

I'm *still* not 100% sure what it means, other than an adjective that is sometimes used to describe an effeminate gay man. It's an interesting word.

R135, it originally means unnatural in an eerie, haunting and delicate way - "fey" relating to the concept of "fairie". People who seem self-destructive, perverse, melancholy or simply remote are sometimes described as this.

Syd Barrett springs to mind, R136.

Robert DeNiro was never faun-like.

I think a few of the women actresses/characters on Dragnet could be described as fey.

Nydia Westman

Kathleen Freeman

When I was on Glee, I had SO MUCH tween pussy thrown in my face that it just turned me gay!

Dan Levy could not convincingly play a straight corpse.

Monty Woolley

John Wayne

Bea Arthur, Eve Arden, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell and Jodie Foster

R43- Are you a FRAU?

He had a strong gay accent especially when he said

CRISSSSSY.

R19- Unlike John Hurt - he played gay/queer extremely well. But I’m still not sure he was straight in real life anyway.

George Sanders

[quote] Dan Butler wasn't the one who screamed "gay" on that series. I like David Hyde Pierce as an actor, but he was in no way believable playing straight Niles Crane. His long-simmering passionate love for Daphne was unconvincing, to say the least.

They even eventually wrote the fact that Niles seemed gay into the script on several episodes, the ski instructor who assumed Niles was gay and was pursuing him, Frasier's new gay station director assumed Niles was gay and several other times.

Yeah Dan Butler did not seem gay on Frasier.

Michael Douglas is a self-confirmed sex addict so the idea that he fucked everything (other men included) is not very far-fetched.