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All Of Us Strangers, Love, Simon & 4 Other Hollywood Movies That Got LGBTQ+ Representation Right
Over the years, Hollywood has shown more inclusivity towards the LGBTQ+ community and so films like The Normal Heart and All of Us Strangers got queer actors to portray queer roles.
Cinema is a reflection of society and serves as its voice as well. And one of the most-talked-about has been the representation of the marginalized including the LGBTQIA community and providing them a platform to tell their stories in their own voice in film industries across the globe.
Although over the years, the portrayal of queer individuals in Hollywood has evolved and it features more protagonists and characters than ever with sexual identities not confined to one category, there is still a long way to go in terms of representation. With each passing year, Tinseltown is slowly being more inclusive when it comes to queer people but there is a visible change. The new generation of actors has acknowledged that they have been afforded the freedom and space to be whomever they want to be with.
While the rise in OTT platforms has provided padded support to the representation of LGBTQ characters by queer actors for its new generation audience who value inclusivity, the big screen is still taking it slower. We have got you the top six Hollywood movies that got the LGBTQ representation on point.
The Normal Heart (2014)
Directed by mega-producer Ryan Murphy and written by the late activist Larry Kramer, HBO's 2014 film adaption of The Normal Heart is based on the latter’s play of the same name, a scathing critique of the government's inaction during the early stages of the AIDS crisis. The film follows Ned Weeks who battles in the early 1980s to prevent the fast-spreading HIV AIDS epidemic from taking the lives of every gay male in its path.
The film is highly autobiographical and Weeks’s character is a fictionalized version of Krammer himself and most of the characters are inspired by real-life people as well. It is how Krammer saw the world around him, angry rallying.
The Normal Heart was lauded for its representation of the queer community because of its star-studded cast that includes openly gay actors Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, BD Wong, and Jonathan Groff.
Pride (2014)
In 1984, a group of lesbian and homosexual activists wanted to support the miners' strike which inspired Matthew Warchus’s historical dramedy Pride. In order to encourage the two marginalized communities to unite in support of one another and form the wildly successful Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign, which was crucial in advancing the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in 1980s conservative England, the film follows queer activists as they travel to a small Welsh mining town.
In the film, gay actor Andrew Scott plays the role of Gethin, a gay bookshop owner, who teams up with queer activists to support the protesting miners. “I think it's been embraced by the gay community because I think people are very celebratory about the fact that gay people are not just seen in story lines that are related to sex or sexuality, that their attributes of kindness and bravery and compassion are the things that are celebrated in the movie,” said Scott to Entertainment Weekly earlier in 2018.
Tangerine (2015)
Sean Baker-directed 2015 dramedy Tangerine is an unconventional indie gem that follows two transgender sex workers, Alexandra and Sin-Dee, and their Christmas Eve adventures in Los Angeles. Shot entirely on an iPhone, the film stars Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as the transgender women who weren’t professional actors at the time.
The film received critical praise for its raw and authentic portrayal of trans life and sex work and was also awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film (Limited Release). However, Taylor, who won a 2016 Independent Spirit Award for her performance in the film, told The Hollywood Reporter that she wants to play “just regular female roles”. She continued, “I didn't transition to be a trans woman. I transitioned to be a female and I feel like Hollywood has put it out there to be like, oh, well these are trans women and that's what they are. No, we are females.”
Love, Simon (2018)
Love, Simon is one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies and very first by a major studio to portray same-sex teen romance on the big screen. Not just that, the movies is directed by openly gay filmmaker and even headlined by queer actore Keiyan Lonsdale who plays the role of Simon’s love interest.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Lonsdale said that the film just doesn’t say “Hey, it's OK to be this way,” rather it says, “it's f***ing great. This is normal. You did nothing wrong. You didn't get the short end of the stick. Everyone's good. We're all good. That's what I needed to hear.” Just a year prior to the movie’s release, Lonsdale came out publicly through an Instagram post.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
With films like Olivia Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy Booksmart, the biographical jukebox musical Rocketman based on Elton John’s life and career, and the historical romantic film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, among many others, 2019 is one of the record years for queer representation.
Directed by Céline Sciamma, the film follows a young 19th-century lesbian Héloïse who initially vehemently rejects her forced marriage but subsequently develops romantic feelings for the woman hired to paint her wedding portrait. Héloïse is portrayed by Sciamma’s former partner French actor Adèle Haenel.
All Of Us Strangers (2023)
Touted to be one of the most heartbreaking and emotional movies of 2023, All of Us Strangers stars Scott as a 40-year-old television screenwriter Adam and Paul Mescal as his neighbor Harry who meet by chance in their high-rise apartment building’s stairwell in present-day London. Eventually, the two fall in love, and the story follows them as they deal with loss, grief, and loneliness.
While most of the movies talking about stories from the LGBTQ community are about iconic movements or iconic people or coming-out stories, one of the major reasons this movie was so loved was how relatable or connecting it was. The film shows how is life after and navigating life generally after coming out, especially for the new generation amid dating and hookup culture.
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