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Topics: Film and TV, Tom Hanks, US News, LGBTQ
Dominic Smithers
Topics: Film and TV, Tom Hanks, US News, LGBTQ
Tom Hanks says that he doesn't think he'd be cast in Philadelphia if it were made today.
The 1993 movie was a hit, and saw the Toy Story star win the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor that year.
For those of you who've not seen it, first of all, you really should, it's an incredible movie.
Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, who asks lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) to help him take legal action against his employers, who fired him after learned that he has AIDS.
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The film was met with rave reviews from critics, with Hanks singled out for his emotionally raw performance.
But looking back at the role, the 66-year-old says he doesn't believe he would he would be cast if it were made today.
And he thinks that's not bad thing.
Speaking to the New York Times magazine last year, Hanks said: "Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so. 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.
"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."
And this isn't the first time that a major name has come out and discussed the issue of straight men playing gay characters.
Taking a different stance to Hanks, Sir Ian McKellen said last year that he thought it was perfectly fine.
The actor came out as gay publicly in 1988 and has championed LGBTQ+ rights ever since.
When speaking to Amol Rajan as part of the presenter's new series on BBC2, McKellen addressed the topic.
The pair were speaking about Dame Helen Mirren being cast in the role of Israel's first female leader, Golda Meir, which has been the subject of discussion recently as Mirren is not Jewish.
Speaking of the matter, McKellen said he agreed with Mirren's casting and that he thought a non-Jewish person could play a Jewish person.
He said: "There are two things – is the argument that a gentile cannot play a Jew, and is the argument therefore that a Jew cannot play a gentile?'
He then linked this to the argument about gay actors only playing 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."