Tom Hanks said a heterosexual actor couldn’t play his Oscar-winning Philadelphia role if the movie had been made today, claiming modern audiences wouldn’t accept the “inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.”
In a recent interview with The New York Times Magazine, Tom Hanks argued that gay roles should only be played by gay actors.
“Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so,” he said. “The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.”
He added: “It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. Do I sound like I’m preaching? I don’t mean to.”
Hanks is the latest Hollywood star to advocate for woke casting — the belief that roles should only be played by actors who share the same sexuality or other immutable traits.
Actor Eddie Redmayne recently disowned his Oscar-nominated performance in The Danish Girl, in which he played a male-to-female transgender person. Octavia Spencer has advocated for casting disabled people as disabled characters, saying the casting able-bodied actors in these roles is “offensive.”
But some stars have rejected this concept as ridiculous.
Ian McKellen, who is openly gay, has slammed woke demands for only gay actors to play gay roles.
“Is the argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part, and if so, does that mean I can’t play straight parts and I’m not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in Macbeth? Surely not. We’re acting. We’re pretending,” the Lord of Rings star said in a recent interview on BBC2.
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