Actor Tom Hardy appears during a press conference promoting the film "Legend" during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015.Darren Calabrese/The Associated Press
There was a bit of a dust-up at TIFF on Sunday during the press conference for Legend, in which Tom Hardy plays openly bisexual British gangster Ronnie Kray. He also plays Ronnie Kray's openly heterosexual twin brother, Reggie Kray.
If that last sentence looked weird, it's because you're probably not accustomed to seeing straight people referred to as "openly heterosexual." Why? Well, because for millennia, heterosexuality was synonymous with sexuality, while anything else–homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, pansexuality, you name it–was considered a deviation from that.
But it's 2015. Just look at this year's TIFF's lineup, which is full of prestige-baiting dramas about gay couples (Freeheld) and transexual people (About Ray, The Danish Girl). The yawning boringness of these movies seems to confirm that what seemed radical 10 or 20 years ago (see: the New Queer Cinema movement, which dovetailed the political possibilities of queerness with the aesthetic possibilities of queer filmmaking) has become normalized, steamrolled into the style and saleability of Hollywood just as it has been increasingly welcomed in society at large. I mean, we're more than two decades out from Philadelphia and actors are still being lauded as "brave" for playing queer characters in films.
Also: Same-sex marriage is legal across large swaths of the western world where Tom Hardy is a big-time movie star. So why is a journalist asking him about his sexuality?
Here's what happened. Graeme Coleman, a reporter working for the LGBT news website Daily Xtra, asked Tom Hardy if he though it was difficult for celebrities to talk about their sexuality, also suggesting that Hardy's own sexuality was "ambiguous." To which a befuddled, somewhat defensive Hardy replied, "Are you asking me about my sexuality?" Coleman replied, "Hmm…sure." And then Hardy simply asked, even more befuddled, "Why?"
It's a fair question. Why indeed? Coleman was likely referring to an old interview in which Hardy mentioned having same-sex relations in his youth. But so what? Clearly Coleman was trying to nudge Hardy out of the closet or something, which would have been a big scoop. (Though "Tom Hardy Shuts Down Reporter Who Asks About His Sexuality," is also a pretty big scoop, it turns out.)
I understand the reporterly impulse to want to do this. I also get that for many in the LGBTQ community, the idea of visibility is of paramount importance–openly gay/bi/trans/etc. celebs help to normalize the experience of queerness. Whether that justifies trying to force closeted (or presumed closeted) famous people out into the open is one thing. But the issue here is that it's something Hardy already readily admitted. He's fooled around with men. Big deal. Who cares?
I can't help but feel like having expectations that celebrities have to come out or be "visible" just cements the idea that famous people are something different, something more, than normal people and just perpetuates the perverse, moronic allure of the same "star culture" that draws people to the side of TIFF barristers to catch a glimpse–literally just a glimpse–of someone who is more wealthy than them and good at playing make-believe for a living.
Why should Hardy, or anyone, have to carry this responsibility? It shouldn't be a tantalizing news item that Tom Hardy is openly (or not-so-openly) gay, any more than it'd be a news item for him to be openly heterosexual.