DANIEL RADCLIFFE ANNOYED BY GAY SEX SCENE QUESTIONS

Actor Daniel Radcliffe says that he’s been “weirded out” by the intense interest shown in the gay sex scenes in his new film Kill Your Darlings, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past weekend.

The 23-year-old star plays the character of the late gay American poet Allen Ginsberg in the movie. 

It tells the true story of a murder at Columbia University in 1944 that draws together some of the great poets of the ‘beat generation’ including Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

The role, which has been described as an attempt by the British actor to break away from his Harry Potter past, sees Radcliffe doing a nude scene, masturbating and kissing and performing sex scenes with male actors.

“It’s interesting that it’s deemed shocking,” he told MTV News after the premiere. “For me, there’s something very strange about that because we see straight sex scenes all the time. We’ve seen gay sex scenes before. I don’t know why a gay sex scene should be any more shocking than a straight sex scene. Or both of them are equally un-shocking.”

He went on to say: “What weirded me out the most last night was people were asking me all these questions about the gay sex scenes. I was like: ‘You know I did Equus [the play in which his character was sexually attracted to a horse]?’ Some people are asking me questions like this is a more shocking subject, which is so strange.”

Radcliffe explained that while shooting one of the gay sex scenes was a new experience there was no time to feel awkward. “…you know what, we shot that whole scene in maybe an hour and a half so it was incredibly fast-paced. I didn’t really have time to stop to think and worry about it.”

Radcliffe has been a long-time supporter of LGBT equality, especially of The Trevor Project; a leading organisation providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBT youth in the US.

A South African release date for Kill Your Darlings has yet to be announced.