Brokeback Mountain

In Brokeback Mountain Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play gay men. However in both their personal lives and through the other roles they accepted in film, they asserted their own straightness. Each of them took certain steps to distance themselves from the characters they played. In modern society today there is a certain stigma associated with being gay. Being gay is frowned upon in much of today's culture, it is considered by some to be backwards and subversive. Ledger and Gyllenhaal did not want to be labeled, both personally and within the film industry, as something they are not. While filming Brokeback Mountain, both actors also were fiming movies in which they played particularly masculine characters. Ledger starred in Casanova, in which he plays a man infamous for his promiscuity and womanizing. Similarly, Gyllenhaal starred in Jarhead, in which he play a marine in operation desert storm. This is a reflection of the actors fear of being typecast into gay roles. Also, during and after the filming of Brokeback Mountain both men asserted several times in interviews that they were straight. It is telling that even though they play gay characters they are both afraid of being labeled as homosexuals.