All round
Downton Abbey star says playing gay character hurt his career
Rob James-Collier, a British actor, has claimed that playing a gay character in Downton Abbey harmed his career prospects in America.
The actor, who previously appeared in the UK soap Coronation Street, featured in the iconic ITV drama for four seasons as cunning gay butler Thomas Barrow, but he now fears he’s been typecast because of his character.
Since the program finished, Rob claims he hasn’t had the same opportunities as his co-stars.
“I think audiences in the U.S. can identify quite easily with the quintessential English gent and English lady, whereas a neurotic, dark, gay character like Thomas is a hard thing to put into the American market. It can lead to typecasting,” the 41-year-old actor told Radio Times.
“Because Thomas Barrow is gay and is, essentially, the bad guy for much of the show, a lot of people within the industry can only see you as that. They might not be in a rush to see you as a heterosexual love interest. That takes time.”
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But Hayden-Smith had something to say about that.
He contrasted James-criticism Collier’s to Charlie Hunnam’s career as a gay character in the first Queer As Folk series.
“Nah mate,” Hayden-Smith tweeted. “Never did little Charlie Hunnam any harm after QAF did it?”
Since the enormously popular ITV drama, the actor has declined to take on theatrical parts “which happened to be gay characters,” according to the actor.
James-Collier went on to say that he has turned down film offers to play gay parts because he wants to “show something different.”
Of course, he isn’t wholly to blame for his typecasting; the issue lies with Hollywood in general. While LGBTQ performers struggle to get jobs, producers and casting directors appear to be tripping over themselves to maintain the old Hollywood habit of casting heterosexual actors like James-Collier in homosexual characters. Excuse us if we don’t exactly emphasize with a straight, cis actor whining about how portraying a homosexual character harmed his growing Hollywood career two years after admitting it was a “privilege” to play a gay character.
Rob recently acted in the British film The Attendant, and he is now slated to star in The Ritual, a horror film about a campaign trip gone tragically wrong.
“It’s a genre I have never done because there’s sometimes a stigma around these films,” he said. “There can be too much hack-slashing gore and nudity. This is different.”
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