As if coming out isn’t difficult enough in our society, LGBTQ+ actors also have to make the decision whether to go public with their sexuality or not. For Ben Aldridge, he decided to keep that part of his life out of his career until just a few years ago, at the age of 34. Now that the Knock at the Cabin actor is out and proud, he is sharing his experience so far with being a gay actor in Hollywood.
Ben Aldridge leads the Knock at the Cabin cast alongside fellow queer actor Jonathan Groff as a married couple on vacation at a log cabin with their young daughter when four strangers hold them hostage and demand they make a difficult choice to prevent the apocalypse. When speaking to his decision to go public about his sexuality, Aldridge shared that it has actually helped his career. In his words:
I made that decision going, 'Well, if that's gonna play against me in any way, I don't wanna work with the people that are making those choices. What [coming out] did do, I think, was align me in queer projects that I wouldn't have necessarily been considered for. A journalist put it to me, 'Do you feel like the universe has rewarded you for coming out?' I don't believe that it would reward me, but I think in being authentic, you interact with the world in a different way. Therefore, what comes back at you is also gonna be different. I have really relished playing gay men. It has given the work that I'm doing much more meaning. I'm meeting myself in my work.
As Ben Aldridge told Entertainment Weekly, being an out queer actor has given him more chances to play gay men, and those opportunities have given his career “more meaning.” The actor gets the rare chance to play a gay leading man in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror movie. It follows Aldridge also starring alongside Jim Parsons in last year’s Spoiler Alert, which is the true story of a journalist who finds out he has terminal cancer.
Aldridge also shared that he grew up in a “fiercely religious evangelical household,” and his journey to being comfortable with his sexuality was a “very slow” one for him. But he finds being connected to projects about the LGBTQ+ community so “revealing” and “healing” for him. The actor also said this:
I'd been taught and shown throughout my 20s that [coming out] might cost me work and might cost me jobs and I might not get hired to play straight or it just might work against me.
Knock at the Cabin also stars Dave Bautista in a more delicate role than we’ve ever seen him before, along with Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint, Nikki Amura-Bird and child actor Kristen Cui in her first ever movie role.
Ahead of the upcoming horror movie hitting theaters this weekend, Knock at the Cabin door has received overall positive reviews from critics, but isn’t universally adored. You can check out CinemaBlend’s Knock at the Cabin review as well before you see the movie.
