Kate Winslet Knows 4 Actors Hollywood Has Scared to Come Out

Kristen Stewart was basically a pariah a few years ago. She was the gloomy actress who slept with a married director (and cheated on Robert Pattinson) and a lot of  Ovid fans wanted nothing to do with her. One short haircut and an interview where she confirms she likes vaginas as much as the rest of us later, she’s basically Hollywood’s new it girl.

This is very much not a typical Hollywood coming-out story, even today. Contrary to what you might imagine, being LGBT is not a ticket to success in Hollywood and homophobia is still an issue in Tinseltown.

Despite Hollywood’s gay-friendly image to the public, Kate Winslet says that being gay can severely limit your career prospects as an actor.

Page Six reports Winslet says she knows at least four people who are in the closet and afraid that coming out would cost them acting roles. In 2021.

“I can think of at least four actors absolutely hiding their sexuality,” the actress, 45, told the Sunday Times. “It’s painful. Because they fear being found out. And that’s what they say. ‘I don’t want to be found out.’”

Winslet explained that the discrimination often begins as soon as actors and actresses launch their careers.

“I cannot tell you the number of young actors I know — some well-known, some starting out — who are terrified their sexuality will be revealed and that it will stand in the way of their being cast in straight roles,” she said, calling the notion “f–ked up.”

Gay actors Neil Patrick Harris and Jim Parsons both had a lot of success playing straight characters, but neither came out until after the shows they were on started airing. And still Hollywood is nervous that gay actors can’t “play straight,” even though 20-30-somethings routinely play teenagers.

“It’s bad news. Hollywood has to drop that dated crap of, ‘Can he play straight because, apparently, he’s gay?’” she told the newspaper, noting that the stigma applies to “men more than anything.”

“That should be almost illegal. You would not believe how widespread it is. And it can’t just be distilled to the question about gay actors playing gay parts. Because actors, in some cases, are choosing not to come out for personal reasons. And it’s nobody’s business. Perhaps privacy. Perhaps conditioning and shame.”

Here’s a fun game: name a living, male openly bisexual actor. Did you say Alan Cumming? If you said anyone I’ll bet you said Alan Cumming.

We like to think of Hollywood and brands and big cities as being liberal utopias where the LGBT community is welcomed with open arms because of a deep sense of moral righteousness. It’s actually all a calculated business decision.

There’s an episode of 30 Rock where Jack tells Liz “We’ll trick those race-car-loving wide loads into watching your lefty, homoerotic propaganda hour yet.” That is the purest distillation of how Hollywood and big business writ large think about these issues. It’s all a calculation about how to make the most money.