Andrew Garfield Believes Forbidding Straight Actors from Playing Gay Characters Would be the ‘Death of Empathic Imagination’
Andrew Garfield is in the competition for Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his performance in Tick, Tick…Boom!. In a new interview, Garfield spoke about a past performance in which he played a gay character. Straight actors playing gay characters has been a topic of debate within the entertainment industry for a while and Garfield shares his own opinion on this issue.
Andrew Garfield had an incredible 2021
Garfield had a series of impressive performances in 2021. His role as Jonathan Larson in Netflix’s Tick, Tick…Boom! is revered and he has a chance to earn his first Oscar for it. In addition, he also starred as Jim Bakker alongside Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Still, most people saw him in Spider-Man: No Way Home where he reprised his version of the superhero for the film. It is now one of the highest-grossing films of all time and Garfield got the chance to give his Spider-Man some closure.
Garfield isn’t against straight actors playing gay characters
Back in 2018, Garfield played a gay man with AIDS in the play Angels in America. The actor received praise for his performance, even though Garfield himself is straight. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Garfield was asked about this performance and whether he thinks straight actors should be allowed to play gay characters.
“I think it’s two different conversations getting conflated,” Garfield explained. “One is about equality of opportunity, and I’m completely in on that. Because we should want a world in which no matter your sexual orientation, your color, or your heritage, everyone gets a fair whack. But the other is about empathic imagination, and if we only allow people to be cast as exactly who they are, it’ll be the death of it. So, the two separate conversations have to happen simultaneously. Because I’m not willing to support the death of empathic imagination. It’s what we need most as a culture, and it’s beautiful. It’s the only thing that’s going to save us right now.”
The Academy has awarded many of these performances
Garfield received a Tony award for his performance in Angels in America and he is not the only straight actor to receive an award for playing a gay character. In fact, it has happened a couple of times at the Academy Awards.
Hilary Swank won Best Actress for her role as a transgender male in Boys Don’t Cry; Jared Leto won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a transgender character in Dallas Buyer’s Club, and Sean Penn won Best Actor for his performance in Milk as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.
This issue is ongoing and is even impacting current casting decisions. Scarlett Johansson left a project where she would have played a transgender character after receiving backlash on the internet. In 2020, the same thing happened to Halle Berry for a similar role.
You can catch Andrew Garfield in Tick, Tick…Boom!, which is currently streaming on Netflix.
