Check out the James Marsden gallery

James Marsden is best known for portraying Cyclops, a moody stud who fires laser beams out of high-tech Oakleys, in the smash X-Men films.

 

At the end of June he can be seen in Superman Returns as the rival to the Man of Steel’s affections for Lois Lane. Will it be handbags at dawn between the man who can’t see through his sunglasses (Cyclops) and the superhero in blue tights? We do hope so.

 

Name

James Paul Marsden

 

Vitals

Born 18 September 1973, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA.

 

If Looks Could Kill

In X-Men: The Last Stand a “cure” for mutancy is found throwing the X-Men into all out civil war. None of this concerns Cyclops because he’s killed off in the first 20 minutes when his telepathic girlfriend Jean is reborn and gives him a deadly kiss. That leaves his love rival, action man Wolverine, to get his claws into Cyclops beloved who would probably benefit from the “cure” because then hopefully he would get a clean T-shirt and a decent hairstyle. That hair must be responsible for the hole in the ozone layer all on its own.

 

Are you a Marsdosexual?

Unsurprisingly James has done some modeling in the past and here’s what he told Abercrombie & Fitch when they asked him who he thought his fanbase comprised of. “Well, I'd say young women between 10 and 24 and probably every gay man in the universe. Straight men all think I'm a pussy. I gotta tell you, if it wasn't for gay men, I'd probably own a carpet cleaning business. I'm very popular with the gay community, which is lovely. There are plenty of people out there who have no clue who I am, but I have never met a gay man yet who didn't know who I was. It's great!” Shrinking Violet? Not our James.

 

Playing gay

James has very strong feelings about gay rights and thinks he could do a better job than the President of the United States. He’s probably right and told Advoctae.com, “When you hear about these homophobic people who feel so threatened by somebody’s sexuality, to the degree that our president wants to amend the Constitution? I mean, are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you really so threatened by somebody’s sexuality? It seems ludicrous to me. We should all take a deep breath and relax and just let everybody do their thing”.

 

In Merchant/Ivory’s Heights James stars as Jonathan, a Jewish lawyer engaged to Isabel, but an art exhibition shows a photograph of him suggesting that Isabel should reconsider walking down the aisle. “It spoke to me because it challenged me on different levels. Is it possible to actually love two different people in two different ways? I’m just astonished by sexuality and humanity in general. It’s never that black and white.”

 

Heights stars Rufus Wainwright as one of James’ ex-lovers and he also gets to kiss hunky Jesse Bradford. Sounds like a dream role to us. “Before we had this kiss scene, the other actor and I had a talk and said, ‘The worst thing we could do is to do it 50 percent, so lets just fucking do it and be in the moment and be these guys.’ Did I get off on it? No, but you know what? If I kiss a girl in a movie, I don’t really get off on that either because you’ve got ten thousand people and a camera pointing at you.”

 

In psychological thriller The 24th Day James plays a gay lothario accused of giving a one-night stand HIV five years ago. The aggrieved party stalks James, lures him back to his apartment, knocks him on the head, ties him to a chair, takes a blood sample, and tells him that if the test comes back positive, he’ll kill him.

 

James proved he could belt out a tune when he appeared in Ally McBeal and his co-star in X-Men Hugh Jackman wanted him to be his boyfriend in stage musical in The Boy From Oz, but the scheduling didn’t allow the two to work together. Shame.

 

Availability

James had to wear elevated shoes for most of his scenes in the X-Men movies, because his character Cyclops is supposed to be 6' 3" when James is under 6 feet tall and slightly shorter than his love interest Famke Janssen. Totty Watch can happily report to being 5’ 6” so their shouldn’t be a problem and when you’re lying down height is irrelevant.

 

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