Congratulations to openly gay Brit singer-songwriter Sam Smith who, along with his writing partner Jimmy Napes, won an Oscar for Best Original Song for Writing's on the Wall for the Spectre movie. In a year when the focus of the Academy Awards was all about diversity, Smith very passionately dedicated his win to the LGBT Community. He however didn't stop there as he also added that it was an honor to be the first openly gay man to win one of these precious statutes, but on that account he was wrong, several times over.
One of the most high profile gay winners in the past was Lance Dustin Black who won a Best Screenplay Academy Award for 'Milk' the biopic about slain gay politician Harvey Milk in 2009 when Sam Smith was 17 years old. Black's win was matched with one of the most eloquent speeches the Awards audience had ever heard. In fact he relayed a copy of it to Smith last night with a very funny tweet which said if you have no idea who I am, it may be time to stop texting my fiancé. Black is of course engaged to the very handsome diver Tom Daley.
The very first openly gay actor to win an Oscar was in fact Sir John Gielgud and it was for his performance in 1981 for the film, Arthur.
In 1969, it was the turn of yet another Brit John Schlesinger who won the Oscar for Best Director in Midnight Cowboy, his film about two New York hustlers. He would later go on to be collect one of four Oscar nominations that were given in 1972 to Sunday Bloody Sunday a movie about a young bi-sexual Brit who flitted between his older male and female lovers.
Even before this, in 1964 openly gay George Cukor who was known to be the head of the gay subculture in Hollywood during the 1930′s, was the recipient of the Oscar for Best Director in My Fair Lady.
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| Cukor with presenter Joan Crawford |
Quite how Sam Smith could forget about one of the world's gay-est singers ever is hard to believe, and he should have known that Sir Elton John won an Oscar in 1994 for Best Original Song with Can You Feel The Love Tonight.
In 2006, it was the turn of another gay rockstar when Melissa Etheridge won the Oscar for the Best Original song. Her song, I Need to Wake Up, was featured in the Vice President Al Gore's Oscar winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
Gay songwriter Howard Ashman collected six Oscar Nominations and won twice . Both wins were for Disney songs he co-wrote which Alan Menken and were sadly awarded to him posthumously in 1992 and 1993 after he had died of AIDS just aged 40.
In 1991 Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim collected his Oscar for this little ditty that he wrote for Madonna to sing in the movie Dick Tracy.
Sam Smith claimed that his source of mis-information about the lack of openly gay winner was he claimed none other than Sir Ian McKellen, which is hard to believe as his friend Bill Condon won one for writing the screenplay of Gods & Monster a movie that McKellen starred in and picked up an nomination for too.
Another screenplay Oscar went to Alan Ball for American Beauty, one of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, that the movie won in 2000.
Rounding this list up to a neat dozen are two actors who came out as gay sometime after they had won their Oscars. Joel Grey won for his definitive performance as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret in 1973, but didnt talk about his sexuality publically until 2015. Jodie Foster got her first Oscar Nomination (for Taxi Driver) when she was just 14 years old, and then 12 years later she won her first Best Actress Award for The Accused, followed by another one for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Foster had been in a same-sex relationship for years but never talked about it openly until 2007.
