Actors Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci
discuss their views on straight actors taking gay roles.
In the new movie Supernova,
Firth and Tucci play a committed couple struggling with a diagnosis
that threatens to rip apart their relationship.
Firth, 60, and Tucci, 59, play Sam and
Tusker, respectively, a middle-aged gay couple who take a road trip
through England's Lake District as they digest Tusker's diagnosis
with young-onset dementia.
(Related: Supernova,
starring Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci as a gay couple, premieres next
week.)
The actors discussed their views on the
subject in an interview with UK LGBT glossy Attitude.
“I don't have a final position on
this,” said Firth, who also played a gay character in the 2010 film
A Single Man. “I think the question is still alive. It's
something I take really seriously, and I gave it a lot of thought
before doing this.”
"Whenever I take on anything, I
think it's an insufferable presumption. I don't really feel I have
the right to play the character. That's always the starting point.
What do I know about this person's life?”
"How can I presume to set foot in
this person's lived experience, let alone try to represent it?"
he rhetorically asked.
(Related: Lord
of the Rings
star Viggo Mortensen defends playing gay role in new film.)
“For so many years,” Tucci
said, “gay men and women have had to hide their homosexuality
in show business to get the roles they wanted – that's the problem
here.”
“Anybody should be able to play any
role that they want to play – that's the whole point of acting,”
he added.
Tucci played a gay character in the
2006 film The Devil Wears Prada.