Colin Firth: “There might be risks for a gay actor coming out … The politics of that are quite complex”

Colin Firth proved in A Single Man that a straight actor can very convincingly portray a gay man onscreen. Firth, who also played a gay man in 2008′s Mamma Mia, was so good in the Tom Ford-directed drama that he earned an Academy Award nomination on Tuesday.

That same day over in London, Firth was attending the UK premiere of A Single Man and acknowledged that his performance did nothing to help openly gay actors land the plum roles – gay or straight – in Hollywood.

“There might be risks for a gay actor coming out,” he said. “The politics of that are quite complex, it seems to me. If you’re known as a straight guy, playing a gay role, you get rewarded for that. If you’re a gay man and you want to play a straight role, you don’t get cast — and if a gay man wants to play a gay role now, you don’t get cast.

“I think it needs to be addressed and I feel complicit in the problem,” he added. “I don’t mean to be. I think we should all be allowed to play whoever — but I think there are still some invisible boundaries which are still uncrossable.”