11 Times Playing Queer Paid Off For Straight Actors At The Oscars

It pays to be gay—but only if you're straight.
From: NewNowNext

 There’s a bitter irony to Hollywood’s relationship with the LGBT community: We’re everywhere in the film industry, but it’s only now that actors are even starting to have successful careers outside the closet.

And when it comes to LGBT representations on the big screen, studios almost always cast heterosexual cisgender performers—and then shower them in Oscar gold for it.

 That’s not to devalue the work done by current nominees like Carol’s Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara or The Danish Girl’s Eddie Redmayne. But no LGBT actor has ever won an Academy Award for playing an LGBT character. In a year where trans actresses Mya Tayor and Kiki Rodriguez delivered star-making performances in Tangerine, and were shut out of the Oscar conversation altogether, it feels especially unbalanced.

We take a look at 11 times that the Academy rewarded straight actors for playing LGBT characters

1

William Hurt

“Kiss of the Spider-Woman” 

1985

Hurt was the first actor to win an Oscar for playing gay—scoring a Best Actor trophy as flamboyant drag queen Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman.

While the film is excellent, Molina’s fate—shot, killed and tossed into a dumpster—still played into the Hollywood trope that queers end up dead. In fact, half of the characters on this list met untimely (and usually gruesome) ends.