Sean Penn says straight actors being barred from queer roles is ‘a timid and artless policy’

Sean Penn has addressed the ongoing debate surrounding straight actors playing queer roles, calling arguments against the idea “a timid and artless policy.”

The 63-year-old actor secured his second Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, in the 2009 biopic, Milk.

Penn argued in a new interview with The New York Times that a straight actor playing a queer figure like Milk “could not happen in a time like this.”

“It’s a time of tremendous overreach,” Penn said. “It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”

In 2021, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies declared that queer roles should be reserved for queer actors in a move towards greater authenticity.

“I’m trying to avenge hundreds of years of inequality,” he told The Independent at the time. “[It’s A Sin] has also unashamedly cast gay people in straight roles. I think that’s fine because, believe you me, from the age of eight we are studying straight people and how to fit in with them.”

Several straight actors, including Cate Blanchett (Carol), Rachel Weisz (Disobedience) and Suranne Jones (Gentleman Jack), who have played queer characters, have disagreed.

“I will fight to the death for the right to suspend disbelief and play roles beyond my experience,” Blanchett said in 2018.

Penn went on to tell The New York Times that he “went 15 years miserable on sets” as “Milk was the last time I had a good time.”

The Mystic River star explained: “I feel like an actor who is playing a leading role and is a known actor and is being paid well has a leadership position on a film and you’ve got to show up with energy and be a bodyguard for the director in some way.

“I was faking my way through that stuff and that was exhausting. Mostly what I thought was just, ‘What time is it? When are we going to get off?’” Penn continued. “I was sure it was done, but I didn’t know how I was going to keep my house running or travel freely or things like that if I stopped.”

Penn can currently be seen opposite Dakota Johnson in the new movie Daddio, which premieres in theaters on June 28.

Directed by Christy Hall, the film follows a woman who gets into a taxi at New York’s JFK airport and gradually opens up to the driver about her life and affair with a married man.

“I felt like this could be a pleasant experience,” Penn said about the movie, “and that’s gonna matter to me now, maybe more than in the past.”