Fry: 'Playing gay characters isn't brave'

Stephen Fry has insisted that heterosexual actors should not be praised for playing gay characters.

Fry, who is openly gay, complained that straight male performers are wrongly labelled "brave" for agreeing to kiss other men on-screen.

"Straight actors can play gay people and they're rather congratulated on it," he told Radio Times. "People say 'Ooh, how brave of you'."

"It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman - I'll kiss a frog if you like," Fry continued. "And why should it be difficult for a man to kiss another man?"

He added: "It's difficult to ride bareback backwards while unicycling, but to kiss someone isn't difficult. It's just part of the insanely irrational way that the human mind works."

Fry also said that it would be "mean" for him to hide the fact that he is gay - as his experiences could help other gay men to be open about their sexuality.

"If you... have had the experiences I have had, not to share them where they can be useful is just mean," he explained. "The obvious case is coming out as a gay man, which I did when it was quite a rare thing to do.

"You think of the average person in the playground who's terrified of being beaten up, or the people who are not in a job like mine, where it doesn't really matter, and these people need to be reassured that they're not alone and they're not freaks."