Here is Greg in Hollywood’s queer-eyed preview of the Academy Awards – past and present

Are you ready? I sure am!

Sunday is, of course, the Academy Awards and since I’ll be covering the event (from a private party this year) for Gay Star News, I will especially be keeping my eye out for any LGBT-related storylines during Hollywood’s biggest night of the year.
Eddie Redmayne is up for best actor for playing a transgender woman in The Danish Girl while Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are nominated for playing lesbians in the film Carol.

Nominated this year for screenplay adaptation is out lesbian Phyllis Nagy for Carol, a wonderful film about a married woman (Blanchett) who falls in love with a much younger department store clerk (Mara).

‘It’s actually not that important to win,’ Nagy (pictured, right) told me at a recent Wrtier’s Guild of America event. ‘The nomination, at least for a writer, is enough. I’ve never been to the Oscars so I look forward to that. It should be a great time and I’ll watch every second unless I really, really have to go to the bathroom.’

As for nominees Blanchett and Mara she says: ‘I couldn’t have wanted two better people to embody those words and those looks and everything else that they brought to it. It’s rare when you see every single take and you’re happy with all of them.’

Nagy does not hide her disappointment that Carol was not nominated for best picture.

‘Of course it’s disappointing,’ she says. ‘It’s not often that a film gets six Oscar nominations – that aren’t technical – and doesn’t get a best picture nomination. I don’t know how that happened or what it means but ultimately they voted for other movies and that’s that.’

Also of LGBT interest this year: gay singer-songwriter Sam Smith is also vying for Oscar gold for co-writing the theme to the James Bond film SPECTRE which he will be performing on the show. His competition includes bisexual performer Lady Gaga who will be performing her nominated song Til It Happens to You from the documentary The Hunting Ground.

Anohni is the first trans performer to be ever nominated for Best Song – the category Smith and Gaga are nominated in. But she has decided to boycott the Oscars because she was not invited to perform her song Manta Ray for the climate change documentary Racing Extinction.

The original song category has been kind to queer artists in the past with Melissa Etheridge, Elton John and Stephen Sondheim among the past winners in the category.

Redmayne, last year’s best actor winner for The Theory of Everything, is not expected to repeat this year with Leonardo DiCaprio a heavy favorite to win for The Revenant.

But if he were to prevail, he would join Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (The Dallas Buyers Club) as performers who have won an Oscar for playing a transgender character.

Blanchett, already a two-time Oscar winner, is expected to lose to heavy favorite Brie Larson who has swept virtually all of the awards this season. But if she were to win, she would join Charlize Theron (Monster) as a winner for the portrayal a lesbian character.

Penelope Cruz won the supporting actress Oscar in 2010 for her portrayal of a bisexual woman in Vicky Cristina Barcelona – the same category Mara is nominated in this year. Mara’s competition includes Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl. Vikander played the wife of Redmayne’s transgender character.

While none of the 10 male acting nominees played gay characters this year, previous years have resulted in Oscar wins for playing gay characters for Sean Penn (Milk), Tom Hanks (Philadelphia), William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman), Christopher Plummer (Beginners) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Capote).

Among the competition for the late Hoffman at the 2006 Oscars was the late Heath Ledger who was nominated for best actor for playing a closeted gay man in love in Brokeback Mountain – a film that won that year for best director (Ang Lee) and best screenplay adaptation for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

Three years later, Dustin Lance Black would win the Oscar for original screenplay for Milk – a film about gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk. Black a memorable speech that night in 2009 about LGBT equality which propelled him to the front lines of the successful battle for same-sex marriage on a federal level in the US.

While this will not be the year when an openly gay person wins an acting Oscar, at least two past winners have come out publicly since their victories.

Jodie Foster, best actress winner in 1989 (The Accused) and 1992 (The Silence of the Lambs), came out publicly in 2013 while accepting a life achievement prize at the Golden Globe Awards.

Two years later, 1973 supporting actor winner Joel Grey (Cabaret) finally opened up publicly about being gay in an interview with People Magazine.

Two-time nominee Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) said last month that if he had won either time, he planned a speech acknowledging his sexual orientation.

“No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar; I wonder if that is prejudice or chance,’ McKellen told Sky News.

He pointed out how several straight actors like Hanks and Hoffman have won the award for portraying gay characters.

‘How clever, how clever,’ McKellen mused. ‘What about giving me one for playing a straight man?’

For each of his nominations, McKellen had speeches prepared that began, ‘I’m proud to be the first openly gay man to win the Oscar.’

He says: ‘I’ve had to put it back in my pocket twice.’