Gay-acting straight man.

Currently directing a play about Noel Coward and the closet, Urbania actor Dan Futtermansays he often prefers gay roles, And making out with Matt Keeslar's not bad either

When Sarah Jessica Parker posed that bedeviling question--"Is he a straight gay man, or is he a gay straight man?"--in a 1999 episode of HBO's Sex and the City, actor Dan Futterman played Exhibit A. Appearing as a Chelsea pastry chef with an encyclopedic knowledge of designer labels and an abiding respect for Cher, he surprised Kristin Davis's Charlotte when he planted a clearly hetero kiss on her.

But for the 33-year-old Futterman, the question simply isn't all that compelling. "I don't want to seem too blase about [sexual orientation], but I guess I don't make too much of a deal out of it either," he observes during a break from readying the first play he has directed, the Los Angeles premiere of Private Life, which imagines the price Noel Coward may have paid for living in the closet. "People are attracted to different people, and to me, it's all the same. On a continuum of sexuality, I have a healthy dose of homosexuality, so I can understand what's attractive about particular men. I just have absolutely no [sense of] judgment about it. Maybe that's what gets in other people's way. They have a certain judgment about it, and that becomes a barrier."

The barriers created by such judgments are the subject of Private Life, written by and starring Futterman's friend Craig Archibald. The play looks in on Coward as he wakes up one morning in New York's Plaza Hotel, confronts a stack of scathing reviews, and contemplates the possibility of life with a young American sailor he picked up the night before. "The Coward character has an opportunity to learn something from this young guy who's comfortable in his own skin, but he passes it up and sends him on his way," Futterman explains. "It's a great missed opportunity. For me, it attacks head-on a lot of real-life issues that affect gay men but are also human issues. How do you decide how to live your life? With whom? Do you find someone to depend on, or do you live alone?"

Since first making his mark as the straight son who's embarrassed by his two gay fathers in 1996's The Birdcage--"His embarrassment was no different than the embarrassment that any kid feels about his family," he notes--Futterman has found that playing gay has often provided him with more challenging roles than sticking to the straight and narrow. For example, his recurring role on CBS's Judging Amy, Tyne Daly's sometimes aimless son, Vincent, isn't the most complex character, Futterman notes. "I'm a little bit of a middle-aged woman's wet dream on the show--a fantasy of what a young guy would be like who's a little bit lost but not too lost, a guy who always comes home to mom."

On the other hand, playing a traumatized gay man in last year's darkly compelling indie film Urbania (out on video and DVD on March 13), Futterman got to pull out all the stops. "It was a great acting exercise," he says. "You meet Charlie at a point where he's paralyzed. He's trying on different ways of being--some of it's anger, some of it's seductive. He's exorcising all these emotions and finally dealing with the thing that's actually at the root of it all."

Urbania director Jon Shear says Futterman's casual ambiguity is exactly what the part needed. "Danny is so comfortable with himself, he doesn't have to defend any aspect of himself," Shear observes. "He embodies a fluidity that I think is a touchstone of the early 2000s. He was confident in going to all these extremes: playing both masculine and feminine, both aggressive and passive, living in both his head and in his dick."

Indeed, Futterman hardly minded his love scene with Matt Keeslar. "He's such a gorgeous guy," the actor says with a laugh. "It would be hard to understand how you could miss that in him."

In fact, where lots of straight actors try to distance themselves from the gay characters they play, Futterman has to be coaxed into mentioning his wife--writer Anya Epstein, whom he met when they both worked on the same episode of Homicide: Life on the Street--with whom he's expecting a child. "You know, I always find it creepy," he says, "when you read an article about someone playing a gay character and the first thing they do is mention their girlfriend or wife." Spoken like a true gay straight man.

Kilday also contributes regularly to Premiere and Variety.

For the Advocate's past coverage of Urbania and links to related Internet sites, go to www.advocate.com