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Actor Neil Patrick Harris (right), shown with boyfriend David Burtka, came out in November 2006 to little controversy. (Photo by Matt Sayles/AP)
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > FEATURE
By: KATHERINE VIOLIN
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Gay internet gossip sites were abuzz last week after Jodie Foster appeared to make a tacit coming out speech at an awards banquet.
Foster, long suspected by some of being a lesbian, concluded her speech at the Women in Entertainment Power 100 breakfast on Dec. 4 in Los Angeles by thanking "my beautiful Cydney, who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss." The Cydney in question was largely believed to be Cydney Bernard, a film producer thought to be Foster's partner of 14 years.
Adding to the melee was another rumor about a potentially lesbian star: Queen Latifah. Some sites claimed the singer-turned-actress was about to wed her female personal trainer after a blind item in the New York Post's Page Six gossip column implied it first.
Publicists for both stars did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but Latifah did respond to the rumors with a reporter from the Chicago-Sun Times.
"When you're famous these days, it's just part of the deal — unfortunately," Latifah told the paper. "People will make up all sorts of things that are not true. There ain't going to be no wedding."
From the quotes that appeared in the Sun-Times, Latifah didn't appear to deny or affirm whether she is dating her trainer.
While rumors, questions, denials and tacit affirmations swirl, the age-old question remains: why is it so hard to be openly gay in Hollywood, an industry built at least partially by gay people?
Perhaps quite telling is that not a single Hollywood actor, even those who are out, would respond to interview requests for this article, including former "Queer As Folk" actor Robert Gant and T.R. Knight from "Grey's Anatomy." So, the closet seemingly remains despite the fact that Knight, Neil Patrick Harris and David Hyde Pierce all came out in the past 14 months alone.
"I think a lot of it is still mostly that actors are concerned that they're not going to get cast in parts," says Stephen Tropiano, gay TV expert and author of "The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV."
"There is still probably a stigma attached that if you're gay or lesbian you wouldn’t be able to play a heterosexual. It's been proven that that's not necessarily the case with people that have come out like Neil Patrick Harris for example. But he … was already on the show when he came out. Would he have been cast in the same part? I don't know," Tropiano said.
Then there are the ever-present publicist/agent teams that seemingly discourage stars from coming out. When rumors started flying this year about Harris' orientation, his publicist responded by saying that Harris was "not of that persuasion," a lie Harris quickly corrected.
"I think he ended up firing the publicist because he was upset because he said that [Harris and boyfriend David Burtka] never really hid it. He probably was just never asked," Tropiano says.
WHILE GATEKEEPERS LATCH AND unlatch the closet door according to whim, audiences are more prepared than ever to accept gay actors in roles, Tropiano says, pointing to Knight, who was quasi-forced out of the closet in October 2006 when Isaiah Washington, his "Grey's" costar, called him a "faggot" on the set. The remark set off a publicity firestorm that resulted in Washington's eventual firing.
"His circumstances were not necessarily his," Tropiano says about Knight. "Has it really affected him on the show? Probably not. I think we probably have to give audiences a little more credit. There's so many people that we grew up watching that turned out to be gay that it doesn't really matter to us very much."
Tropiano cites as an example Robert Reed, who played father Mike Brady on "The Brady Bunch." The show was the last word in wholesome family entertainment, but Reed was gay and HIV positive when he died of colorectal cancer in 1992. Despite America's familiarity with gay people, few A-listers are out.
"If you're an A-list star and you get to the point where you have some cache, I think in some ways it would be a little bit easier for you, but it also depends on what kind of roles you play," Tropiano says. "I would assume it would be easier because you have the power, but then on the other hand, I can't really name a top actor, an A-list ...
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