'Glee' star Jane Lynch disagrees with
actors Rupert Everett and Richard Chamberlain on whether Hollywood is
homophobic.
Lynch, who stars as sharp-tongued coach
Sue Sylvester on the Fox musical-comedy Glee, has rejected
claims that openly gay actors can't get work in Hollywood.
Chamberlain, who came out gay at the
age of 69 in his 2003 memoir Shattered Love, advised gay
actors to remain closeted in an interview with gay glossy The
Advocate.
“There's still a tremendous amount of
homophobia in our culture,” he said. “It's regrettable, it's
stupid, it's heartless, and it's immoral, but there it is. For an
actor to be working is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren't,
so it's just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don't care if
anybody knows I'm gay' – especially if you're a leading man.”
“Personally, I wouldn't advise a gay
leading man-type actor to come out.”
British actor Everett expressed a
similar sentiment, saying work for him dried up after he announced he
was gay.
But Lynch, who married her girlfriend
last year, disagreed, insisting the Hollywood she knows is not
homophobic.
“Look, I've never – as far as I
know, it's been behind my back if it has – I've never been turned
down for a role because I'm gay,” she
told gay entertainment website AfterElton.com. “I don't find
Hollywood, in my own experience, to be homophobic.”
Lynch, however, added that gay people
don't often play straight roles because audiences wouldn't find it
believable.
“I think because since most of the
world is straight … we want the audience to project their hopes and
dreams for love and romance onto those actors. And if it's not in
some way possible, maybe never probably, in their mind that it could
never happen, then they're [studios] not going to do it. You know,
most people are straight, and I think that's probably why.”
“I do think the straight folks will
continue to play the straight roles,” she added.