Michael Ontkean (left) and Harry Hamlin.Photo: 20th Century studios/Kobal/Shutterstock
It’s been four decades sinceHarry Hamlinplayed a gay writer in 1982’sMaking Love, a film about a same-sex affair — and the first of its kind for a major studio.
“I didn’t see it that way,” Hamlin tells PEOPLE. “I was looking for something serious and something meaningful, rather than doing a movie about vampire bats invading a small town in in the Midwest, which is the type of fare I was being offered at the time.”
Looking back, he says the reception to the film “ended my film career.”
“For years, I’d think was that the reason why I stopped getting calls? And finally realized that was the last time I ever did a movie for a studio,” the actor says. “I’ve done independent films but never a studio film. I had been doing nothing but studio films and basically going out on all the castings for all the movies. That stopped completely.”
“It never really got the attention that I think it probably deserves, given the time in which it was released,” says Hamlin of the film.
Now married toLisa Rinna, 58, ofThe Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,with whom he has two daughters, Delilah, 23, and Amelia, 20, Hamlin says, “The movie was panned and my performance was ignored. The reviews were all negative, pretty much.”
“As far as the film business sort of shutting the door, I think it just had to do with the fact of the studio system being a closed system and once they saw there could be some confusion about my sexuality, then they just said they didn’t want to take the chance,” adds Hamlin. “If they were contemplating having me be a love interest to a young female star, the thought was, ‘How is the audience going to react?’ Even though I was straight, I think the perception at the time was that anybody who could play gay mustbegay.”
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“There was plenty of hyperventilating and fear when the movie opened,” Berg recalls. “In many cities audience members walked out when, for the first time, they saw two men kissing. But many more people saw themselves… or that falling in love with somebody of the same sex did not signal the end of the world. It helped many forge new lives for themselves.”
As Hamlin notes, “Now a gay love story can be told freely. There’s been a tectonic shift since 1981 in people’s conscious and how they approach human sexuality.”
The newAcademy Museumin Los Angeles is hosting a 40th anniversary screening ofMaking Loveon June 23 with a post-screening Q&A to feature Hamlin.
source: people.com
