Everett blasts anti-gay film bias

RUPERT EVERETT, who was one of the first Hollywood actors to be frank about his sexuality, is furious that openly gay actors are still not cast as straight leading men.

To add insult to injury, he says, straight actors are lauded for their ‘braveness’ if they play homosexual roles, as Sean Penn did in the 2008 film Milk.

‘It’s still very biased,’ Everett, 59, says of Tinseltown. ‘Sean Penn is called courageous and wins tons of awards for imagining he’s a passive homosexual, but it just doesn’t work out the other way. That is the thing that is the most frustrating on the whole for gay actors.’

He adds: ‘This notion that gay actors couldn’t possibly imagine making love to a woman is really the nub of the problem. It’s patronising, reductive and insulting.’