| Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns |
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar plays on glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, April 11th, through Sunday, April 13th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
Even though Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and Patrick Swayze are all cishet men playing gay drag queens, I actually love To Wong Foo (1995, directed by Beeban Kidron). The drag is really fantastically done. Also, there is small-town drama, RuPaul, Patrick Swayze’s immaculate posture, and a brief encounter with Robin Williams to consider. I do wonder, though: if this film were made now, would queer actors have been cast instead?
It is possible that the first queer roles in film were played by queer people, but for the most part, we have no way of knowing. The very first film recorded with sound, The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894, directed by William Dickson), even shows two men dancing together, queerness unknown.
For better or worse, thanks to the internet, we have much more access to actors’ personal lives and therefore their identities. So, when did out queer actors begin playing queer roles with regularity? To answer this question, I followed the history of anti-queer policies and laws, and queer representation in cinema. There is a fascinating trail of subtly, villainy, coding, stereotyping, and authenticity. Turns out, it wasn’t until the last five years that queer actors have started playing a higher portion of the queer roles in films.
Since only 20% of mainstream films passed the Vito Russo Test last year, we still need more authentic queer characters on screen, regardless of who is playing them,1 especially because 9.3% of adults in the USA identify as queer.2 Mathematically this means that nearly 1/10 of all lead characters should be queer.
The timeline below is not exhaustive, but highlights moments in queer cinema. I attempted to find moments when there were firsts and shifts in representation and/or reception by cishet audiences. If I missed crucial films in this discussion, or any of your favorites, please add them in the comments section below. While researching, I found the trajectory promising.
1894 The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (directed by William Dickson)
1919 Anders als die Andern/Different from the Others (directed by Richard Oswald)
1922 Manslaughter (directed by Cecil B. DeMille)
1925 Lady of the Night (directed by Monta Bell)
1927 Wings (directed by William A. Wellman and Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast)
1930 Morocco (directed by Josef von Sternberg)
1934 Motion Picture Production Code or Hays Code went into effect
1946 Gilda (directed by Charles Vidor)
1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male published as the first Kinsey Report
1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female published as the second Kinsey Report
1961 Victim (directed by Basil Dearden)
1967 Sexual Offenses Act decriminalizes homosexuality in the UK
1968 Motion Picture Production Code replaced by Motion Picture Association film rating system
1969 Stonewall
1970 The Boys in the Band (directed by William Friedkin) – no out actors
1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (directed by Jim Sharman) – no out actors
1981 First reported AIDS cases by the CDC
1985 The Color Purple (directed by Stephen Spielberg) – no out actors
1989 Longtime Companion (directed by Norman René) – no out actors
1992 Orlando (directed by Sally Potter) – 29 years after the film was released, Swinton came out
1993 Philadelphia (directed by Jonathan Demme) – no out actors
1994 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (directed by Stephan Elliott) – no out actors
1994 Four Weddings and a Funeral (directed by Mike Newell) – out actor, Simon Callow, plays gay best friend
1996 Watermelon Woman (directed by Cheryl Dunye) – several are out
1996 The Birdcage (directed by Mike Nichols) – Nathan Lane wasn’t out yet, but he is now!
1997 My Best Friend’s Wedding (directed by P.J. Hogan) – Rupert Everett as gay best friend
1997 Wilde (directed by Brian Gilbert) – Stephen Fry out and playing Oscar Wilde
1999 But I’m a Cheerleader (directed by Jamie Babbit) – Clea DuVall, but she wasn’t out yet
1999 Todo sobre mi madre/All About My Mother (directed by Pedro Almodóvar) – no out actors
2000 Best in Show (directed by Christopher Guest) – yes, Jane Lynch plays a queer role
2000 Next Best Thing (directed by John Schlesinger) – gay best friend and other complications
2001 Hedwig and the Angry Inch (directed by John Cameron Mitchell) – not at the time, but out now
2003 Sodomy Laws repealed by the USA Supreme Court
2005 V for Vendetta (directed by James McTeigue) – Stephen Fry plays gay best friend
2011 Weekend (directed by Andrew Haigh) – one of them, Chris New is out
2012 The Perks of Being a Wallflower (directed by Stephen Chbosky) – sort of, Ezra Miller
2013 Same-sex marriage legalized throughout the USA
2013 GLAAD creates the Vito Russo Test to analyze queer roles in film
2014 Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho/The Way He Looks (directed by Daniel Ribeiro) – one of them is queer and out
2014 Pride (directed by Matthew Warchus) – several actors are queer and out
2015 Danish Girl (directed by Tom Hooper) – no
2016 Moonlight (directed by Barry Jenkins) – no out actors, but won many awards
2016 Handsome Devil (directed by John Butler) – Andrew Scott is out and plays a gay teacher
2017 Una mujer fantástica/A Fantastic Woman (directed by Sebastián Lelio) – yes, Daniela Vega is an out trans woman
2017 Call Me By Your Name (directed by Luca Guadagnino) – no
2018 Love, Simon (directed by Greg Berlanti) – Keiynan Lonsdale out then
2019 Da chven vitsek’vet/And Then We Danced (directed by Levan Akin) – no, but arguably would have been unsafe, as the first explicitly queer film made in Georgia
2020 The Boys in the Band (directed by Joe Mantello) – all out queer actors
2020 Happiest Season (directed by Clea DuVall) – yes, Kristen Stewart queer and out
2022 Fire Island (directed by Andrew Ahn) – yes, so many out actors
2022 Bros (directed by Nicholas Stoller) – yes, nearly all the actors were out
2023 Rustin (directed by George C. Wolfe) – yes, Colman Domingo is out
2023 Frybread Face and Me (directed by Billy Luther) – yes, both young actors are out
2023 All of Us Strangers (directed by Andrew Haigh) – yes, but just Andrew Scott
2023 The Color Purple (directed by Blitz Bazawule) – yes, several queer actors
In the beginning of film, there were very few queer characters and those who existed were nearly always written and performed as terrible stereotypes. Films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s illustrated a curiosity in filmmakers, actors, and audiences and resulted in exploration of queer characters and themes. The 90s this continued with explorations of gender performance and “the gay best friend” role became commonplace.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo both gave audiences an insider’s view of drag culture, which remains a fascination of cishet audiences today. Once laws began to change, we sped up considerably. Queer actors began playing queer roles more than ever before. The further we get, the better representation generally becomes. There have been many missteps along the way, and continue to be, but the path is clearer than ever before.
Footnotes
1 GLAAD, 2025, https://glaad.org/sri/2024/vito-russo-test/
2Jeffrey M. Jones, “LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Rises to 9.3%,” Gallup, February 20, 2025,
https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon