When Kristen Stewart arrives on the red carpet this March to celebrate her first-ever Oscar nomination, for playing Princess Diana in Spencer, she will be the first-ever Lead Actress nominee to bring her girlfriend/fiancée as her date. (Unless she leaves Dylan Meyer at home which feels unlikely and would wound me personally.)
She’s not the first-ever gay woman nominated for Best Actress, but she is amongst a very small cohort of out queer women to earn a nod: only bisexual performers Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga share that honor. Three other queer actors received Best Lead Actress nominations prior to coming out: Jodie Foster, who earned three nominations in the ’90s; Elliot Page, who was nominated in 2007 for Juno and has since come out as a trans man; and Cynthia Erivo, who was nominated for her role in 2019’s Harriet and came out in 2021.
Then we have the legendarily queer and highly decorated cohort of early Hollywood actors whose sexualities ranged from “open secrets” to “actual secrets” to “maybe not”: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford.
Meanwhile, 19 straight actors have been nominated for Best Lead Actress for playing queer characters.
In the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role category, Ariana DeBose will be the tenth LGBTQ+ actress celebrated by the Academy in that category, for her role as Anita in West Side Story. Debose dated props master Jill Johnson for several years beginning in 2014, having met her while both were working on the Motown: The Musical tour in 2013, and she is openly queer.
Previous queer nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role include Tatum O’Neal (1973), Lily Tomlin (1975), Jodie Foster (1976), Eva La Gallienne (1980), Linda Hunt (1983), Anna Paquin (1993), Angelina Jolie (1999), Queen Latifah (2002), Tilda Swinton (2007), and Cynthia Erivo (2021). Again, Jolie is the only actor “officially” out at the time of her nomination, although Tomlin and Hunt were both already in relationships with the women they’d eventually marry. In the “unconfirmed but definitely not straight according to me personally” bucket we have Spring Dell Byington (1938) and Sandy Denis (1966), who won for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Ariana DeBose is, then, the second Afro-Latina actress nominated for an Oscar for acting, the first queer Latina nominated for an Oscar for acting, the first queer woman of color who is out at the time of her nomination for an acting Oscar and the third queer woman of color nominated for an acting Oscar, along with Queen Latifah and Cynthia Erivo.
Kristen Stewart Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic and Ariana DeBose photo by Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for Bauer Media
This is the first time two out queer women have been nominated in acting categories in the same year.
There’s a few other LGBTQ+ items to celebrate:
The year’s most-nominated film, The Power of the Dog, is gay, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit Mcphee are nominated for playing gay roles.
Jessica Chastain was nominated for Best Actress for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in which she played the titular Tammy Faye, an icon in the gay community. The film gets into her early displays of allyship, including bringing an HIV-positive gay pastor onto her show.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, which Drew called “a masterpiece of Mommy issues,” earned an acting nomination for Penelope Cruz’s queer role and another for musical score.
The very queer and very fun The Mitchells vs. The Machines, centered on a queer teen, was nominated for Animated Feature Film. So was Flee, which tells the story of a gay man named Amin Nawabi, fleeing Afghanistan for Denmark as a refugee. Encanto, which stars queer actresses Stephanie Beatriz and Jessica Darrow, was also nominated for Best Animated Feature.
In conclusion, if you are curious about whether or not you have what it takes to be nominated for an Oscar for playing Princess Diana in Spencer, take our “Which Kristen Stewart Movie Are You?” Quiz.
I’m so god damn happy for Kristen Stewart, I was really worried she’d be snubbed. How far she has come!
…and I agree, she better bring her partner, I NEED those photos.
Hell yeah, Kristen! 😁Hopefully by now she’s shown all of those naysayers she actually can act. 😊
THIS IS AN ARIANA DEBOSE STAN ACCOUNT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
This is such exciting news!
Riese for fun I tried to count the 19 straight actresses nominated for playing queer (and trans) characters and I’m two short, who am I missing? Working backwards:
Penelope Cruz
Andra Day
Viola Davis
Melissa McCarthy
Olivia Colman
Cate Blanchett
Rooney Mara
Glenn Close
Annette Bening
Natalie Portman
Judi Dench twice
Felicity Huffman
Charlize Theron
Salma Hayek
Nicole Kidman
Hillary Swank
Whoopi Goldberg
I didn’t count Marlene Dietrich as I’m pretty sure she was queer.
Oops I didn’t mean for this to be a reply!
EU SEI. The excitement is too much to bear. Just because of this I’m gonna make pastels Oscar night. I better not have made them for nothing.
I understand All my social media accounts have been an Ariana Debose stan account especially since WSS and all the award shows buzz.
GO GAYS!
(can you tell I’ve been shouting at the Olympics all week?)
Sorry for originally putting this as a reply…
This is such exciting news!
Riese for fun I tried to count the 19 straight actresses nominated for playing queer (and trans) characters and I’m two short, who am I missing? Working backwards:
Penelope Cruz
Andra Day
Viola Davis
Melissa McCarthy
Olivia Colman
Cate Blanchett
Rooney Mara
Glenn Close
Annette Bening
Natalie Portman
Judi Dench twice
Felicity Huffman
Charlize Theron
Salma Hayek
Nicole Kidman
Hillary Swank
Whoopi Goldberg
I didn’t count Marlene Dietrich as I’m pretty sure she was queer.
Valerie Perrine as Honey Bruce in “Lenny,” Bette Midler in “The Rose” and Venessa Redgrave in “The Bostonians”? according to Wikipedia, I haven’t seen those films myself!
Ah The Bostonians of course.
I did not know anything about The Rose and now I’m interested, thank you.
I’m not sure about that Honey Bruce thing though — I can’t find anything saying she was bisexual, only that she was in a threesome?
Yay for Ari! I worked with her several years ago – she’s a star.
Is Cynthia Erivo queer? When did that happen?
apparently it happened in august 2021 in an interview with the standard in which she literally said “i am queer” AND NOBODY TOLD US
Riese and Carmen – that’s some excellent investigative journalism. Thank you!
Hmmhmmm. What Riese said: https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/music/cynthia-erivo-interview-new-album-harriet-color-purple-b952232.html
There’s something about seeing Queen Latifah’s name on Autostraddle without an asterisk that’s soothing for the heart.
I’ve followed her career since the beginning and she’s come a long way. Really happy for Kristen she seems lovely. Just wanted to clarify that she actually identifies as bisexual.
I think gay is being used here as an umbrella term, it’s kind of evolved into that for a lot of people. She has herself refferred to herself as “soooo gay” even though as you say, she’s bisexul.
Why did you mention Ariana Debose’s ex but not her current partner/girlfriend Sue Makkoo? They have been together for years and share a house together. There is a People magazine about it.
https://people.com/home/see-inside-west-side-story-star-ariana-debose-upstate-n-y-cottage/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6wyCUugGBO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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