Isaiah Washington suffered “beatdown” after he was mistaken as a gay man while a dancer in his 20s

Isaiah Washington isn’t gay, but he knows what it’s like to be gay bashed.

The Grey’s Anatomy alum told HuffPost Live this week that when he was working as a professional dancer in New York in the 1980s, he was attacked because he was perceived to be gay.

‘I had on leggings,’ Washington explained. ‘Walking around in the Bronx, you’re getting a beatdown.’

He added: ‘Thirty years later, we’re still in that same place.’

Washington’s latest film, Blackbird, hits theaters on Friday and has a gay theme. He plays the supportive dad of a gay son struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his religious faith.

The film is set in the south and co-stars Oscar winner Mo’Nique as a mother determined to pray the gay out of her son.

Washington is one of the film’s producers and it is one of his higher-profile projects since being fired from Grey’s Anatomy in 2007.

The firing came after he allegedly referred to then co-star TR Knight as a ‘faggot’ during an argument with Patrick Dempsey. He then used the word again backstage at the Golden Globe Awards to deny he had called Knight the slur.

Washington’s career badly suffered.

‘Of course i was hurt,’ he said on The Meredith Vieira Show on Thursday. ‘But I gotta get over it and keep on pushing and that’s what I did.’