This dashing star has played a beautiful elf lord, sexy vampire and terrifying alien warlord. He also melted hearts with Anna Friel in the cult TV show Pushing Daisies.
As he returns to Broadway in the iconic play Angels in America, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, he has spoken out about the importance of gay actors playing the gay roles in important works about the LGBGTQXI community.
A few years ago, an McKellen accidentally listed the actor as one of the many gay stars working on the Hobbit movies.
Now Lee Pace has confirmed that he also dates men.
McKellen previously said: “Just look only how many openly gay actors in the Hobbit (there) were: two of the dwarves, to Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Lee Pace.”
Pace didn’t comment at the time and still says that he finds questions about his sexuality “intrusive.”
As he talked about the Angels in America revival, he told W magazine: “Our understanding of what it means to be gay is just so different (from the 1980s). It’s culturally different. It’s just so much further down the road. It’s an interesting thing for me to think about in this moment while working on this play.”
While refusing to label himself, Pace added: “I’ve dated men. I’ve dated women. I don’t know why anyone would care. I’m an actor and I play roles. To be honest, I don’t know what to say.”
The star is famously protective about his private life, but the comments seem rather disingenuous, having just declared that he thinks it is vital that gay actors play major gay roles.
Pace previously played King Thranduil in the Hobbit movies, Garrett in the Twilight Saga and Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy. UK TV viewers will also know him from the musical romance series Pushing Daisies.
In 2011 he made his Broadway in the play The Normal Heart, also about the AIDS crisis.