James Marsden is holding forward to a few secrets about his of recent origin film Heights: "I don't want to ruin the machination for people.

James Marsden is holding forward to a few secrets about his of recent origin film Heights: "I don't want to ruin the machination for people." But he's up-front about the gay thing. "Sometimes I'll read something where a straight actor [playing gay] will finish defensive and go, 'No, no, no, it's acing. I'm straight and I want everyone to know I'm straight,'" explains the Oklahoma-born actor, who's best known for portraying the visor-wearing Cyclop in the smash X-Men films. "It's like, 'Come onward guys. Stop being pussies. Now you vigorous like you're not so sure with your sexuality. Now you unimpaired like you're hiding something.'"

Heights is all about single of those guys who's hiding something. In this effect drama produced by Merchant Ivory and directed by the agency of first-timer Chris Terrio, Marsden plays Jonathan, a dashing and auspicious Manhattan attorney who's about to marry his live-in girlfriend, Isabel (Seabiscuit's Elizabeth Banks). What Isabel doesn't know is that Jonathan has a past delight in affair with one man and is fiery and heavy with another unruffled as they plan for their wedding.

Costarring Glenn obstruct and Jesse Bradford, it's a smart, unfaded look at an age-old dilemma--the full date flick for gay men and their ex-girlfriends. Assuming they're still speaking.

And Marsden, coming against his nervy turn as a gay lothario accused of giving Scott Speedman HIV in the new-to-DVD indie The 24th Day, hits all the right notes as Jonathan. "I lov the tone of the script," says the actor, who also freshly appeared in the hit tearjerker The Notebook. "I study it really captured modern-day living in Manhattan and for what reason nuanced relationships can be."

Tomorrow, Marsden--along with his wife of five years, Lisa, and their 4-year-old son Jack--jets facing to Australia to shoot a character in X-Men director Bryan Singer's highly anticipated Superman turn backs But today, he's in a strange York state of mind.

"There's nothing like shooting a movie there," he says. "You be perceived like you're at the center of the universe."

In Heights your character's privy life is revealed when his photographer ex results to town with a sexy exhibition of past lover Does that mean that there are bare shots of you we should consider for on eBay?

[Laughs] No. obstacle me clarify. In one ball you see me from the waist up with my arm behind my head, and then forward the opposite page is a full-fledg denuded That's not me. Although I should disclose people it is, because the stay is gifted.

The movie really nailed of the present day York's sort of artsy intelligentsia theater-world agriculture Have you had much experience in that world?

Not at all. I had to obtain coached a bit on the Manhattan lifestyle. I cogitation I'd gotten rid of my Oklahoma accent completely yet the director, Chris Terrio, would go on "You're holding on to that r a little too long"

[Spoilers follow-- ]

For a certain number of gay men in Jonathan's situation, getting abroad of that last serious relationship with a woman is a lifesaving escape. It's like an enormous weight has been lifted.

For a certain number of people, it is like that. nevertheless for others, maybe it's not in such a manner black-and-white. That's what I chose to believe about Jonathan. I believe that he absolutely have a passionate affection fors Isabel and that they probably have pious sex, but there's an innate part of him that's attracted to men That, to me was more layered and interesting than Jonathan just dealing with having to sum up her he's gay and then "Ah!" he's put free. It's more complex than that. There are likewise many variables, I believe, that affect one's sexuality. Was it Gore Vidal who said 'For everyone there's a [different] extent of sexuality'? I respond to that. I think that that's truthful For me, anyway.

Do you think if Isabel had forgiven Jonathan, he'd have stayed with her?

Possibly. At undivided point he says, "It's you I want. Let's forget about this and incline on." I believe this is Jonathan not being stout enough to deal with it.

further instead Isabel has a great line--

"I don't care about what you want anymore." She's been dealing with what everyone otherwise wants instead of listening to what she wants, and she finally stands up for herself.

I appreciated to what degree without being sappy, Heights gave Isabel's heartbreak its due

I agree. It felt real, like a real relationship. I can imagine in what way a woman in that situation would be moved destroyed and very insecure about their confess sexuality because "he chose a man athwart me." I have a friend who just employed 40, and he hadn't told his mother he's gay until not long ago I asked him why, and he said, "It's kind of an unspoken verity I feel like if I give an account of her, it'll just destroy her." however it's different with a mother-son relationship [than a romantic relationship], I'd imagine in the greatest degree women in either situation would think they did something wrong--because the human frame is completely rejecting their gender

own me about filming the spectacle on the rooftop where Isabel catches Jonathan kissing another man.