For the first time at this year’s Academy Awards, a pair of actors who openly identify as queer have been nominated for queer roles.
Colman Domingo was nominated for Best Actor for portraying queer civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in “Rustin,” while Jodie Foster was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the queer swimming coach Bonnie Stoll in “Nyad.” It’s never happened before for two actors/characters in the same year. Last year, the queer-identifying Stephanie Hsu earned a Best Supporting Actress bid for her queer character in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Ian McKellen was the first man nominated for an explicitly queer role in “Gods and Monsters” in 1999 – a quarter-century ago.
The historic nature of this is not so much actors being nominated for portraying gay characters but also being out themselves. Plenty of Oscar nominations and wins have gone to actors playing queer characters who didn’t publicly identify as part of that community, including winners William Hurt (“Kiss of the Spider Woman,” 1986), Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” 2019), Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club,” 2014) and Brendan Fraser (“The Whale,” 2023).
Domingo was also one of 10 actors scoring their first-ever nominations this year, alongside Emily Blunt, Jeffrey Wright, Danielle Brooks, Sterling K. Brown, America Ferrera, Lily Gladstone, Sandra Hüller, Cillian Murphy and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
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