Alex Pettyfer: A teenage buddy-bond, then a career of meeting The Girl in a gay-free universe. At least he's super-sized

 

I found several nude photos of Alex Pettyfer, who I recall vaguely from the 2000s.  Didn't he play a gay teenager at one point?  So I'll start the research.  

Alex was born in 1990 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, about 30 miles from London.  His parents were stage actors making the rounds of West End theatres.  His career began at age seven, when fashionista Ralph Lauren met him in a toy store and chose him to be the face of British youth.  

Several schools followed.  I don't know if Alex kept flunking out, or being sent down for pranks, but eventually he ended up at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, and landed his first on-screen role, Tom Brown's School Days (2005).

Movie versions of the 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes are usually rather open about the romances of macho, athletic boarding school boy with snobbish intellectual East (played by Jimmy Lydon, left, and Freddie Bartholomew, center, in 1940).  Alex's version tones down the buddy-bonding in favor of a mentoring relationship with the headmaster (Stephen Frye).  Plus he flirts with a girl.

I'm a little disappointed, but maybe the gay  roles come later.

Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (2006)?  It was supposed to be the start of a series based on Anthony Horowitz's novels about a 14 year old spy.  But the reviews were awful, so it was dropped. Spoiler alert: Alex gets a girlfriend.  

Left: Otto Farrant played Alex Rider in the tv series.  He gets a girlfriend, too.

Wild Child (2008)?  A spoiled rich girl is sent to a stuff British boarding school.  Alex (Pettyfer) plays her "love interest."  Why do they call it a "love interest" instead of "heterosexist propaganda"?

This shot from Tormented (2009) looks like Alex is hugging a boyfriend, but he's actually bullying a boy.  The boy dies, then returns from the dead to get his revenge on the popular kids who "tormented" him.  Bradley plays one of the popular kids; he has sex with his girlfriend, and then gets his penis torn off.

Left: Alex's butt as he gets with his girl.

 

I'm getting tired of this.   I'm skipping to the shows Alex is "known for."

In Time (2011): "In a future where people stop aging at 25, but are engineered to live only one more year, having the means to buy your way out of the situation is a shot at immortal youth."  Wait -- you stop aging at age 25, but die at age 26?  Who cares if you stop aging?   Anyhow, Justin Timberlake and The Girl are on the run. 

Alex plays Fortis, "a greedy, homicidal gangster" who steals time from people.  I read through his biography, hoping that he would be gay, but nope, he tries to sexually assault Justin's girlfriend.

More after the break

Kampan Soni: Czech-Indian boy plays a ghost-chaser and a bartender, jokes about cats, doesn't mention girls. With potential nude photos

Ride or Die on Amazon Prime, features a professional assassin named Judith, being pushed out of the business due to her age, who discovers that baddies are targeting an MP (that's Member of Parliament, to Yanks) and his wife, Debbie.  Who happens to be her "ride or die" (best friend) 

  

I reviewed the first episode.  Not a fan. 

Not much beefcake. We see Judith's hookup (Taylor Napier, left) shirtless, and her mark (Ed Skrein) coming out of the shower. 

No gay characters,  Calum Lynch as Judith's handler gives off a gay vibe, but he flirts with a girl.

Even crowd scenes display endless arrays of male-female couples. 

And there's a nasty bit of queerbaiting.  In an antique warehouse, the PM's wife Debbie gets to a prized apothecary cabinet before celebrity antique dealer Drew Pritchard and his boyfriend.  They fume with envy.  Except the real-life guy is straight.  They just pretended he was gay to fool viewers. 

The only bright spot was Kampan Soni as the cute bartender who Debbie complains to as she downs tequila after tequila.

Kampan grew up in Ahmendabad, in Gujarat State in western India, and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 2018.

He then moved to Prague to attend the Czech University of Life Sciences, where he received a B.Sci. in Agriculture and Food Sciences in 2022.  He is currently a Global Mobility Specialist at  Amazon Prague, which seems to involve Human Resources.

Plus he does comedy povs: "Making you question things you never noticed: Facts, Psychology, Hidden History"

"Why does the ATM pin have only four digits?"

"What do cats really think about?" 

"Why do we like horror movies?"

"Why are popcorns so expensive?"

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his dick, but I'm still depressed

Spy K*ds (2001) stars gay actor Antonio Banderas (left) and Carla Gugino as a husband and wife spy team.  Well, actually, their son and daughter, Juni and Carmen (Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega), who get swept up in an age-appropriate diabolical plot involving tv host Fegan Floop (Alan Cummings, who is bisexual in real life).   

Although everyone is ostensibly heterosexual, some reviews call the film a queer classic due to the extremely hot Dad -- and Mom, apparently, which led to the "queer awakening" of an entire generation of lesbians; the shy, bullied, gay-coded Juni; the kick-ass Carmen; and the gay-coded villain who turns out to be not all that villainous.

The Banderas dick is just to draw your attention.  This profile features the shy, bullied, gay-coded Daryl Sabara.

There were 3 sequels:

The Island of Lost Dreams (2002) strands Juni and Carmen on a Jules Verne/Dr. Moreau "mysterious island," where they run afoul of a mad scientist creating animal hybrids.  Carmen gets a boyfriend, but Juni remains gay-coded.

I didn't see Game Over (2003) where Juni must venture into a video game to save his sister, but the queer coding ends with him meeting The Girl.  He also meets two guys, video game teammates Ryan Pinkston and Bobby Edner.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 2011 All the Time in the World minimized Juni and Carmen in favor of a new sibling team.  The brother is played by Mason Cook, who would go on to Speechless.

During the Spy franchise, Daryl Sabara appeared in the usual one-shot tv spots: Will and Grace, Fatherhood, House, American Dragon: Jake Long, and so on.

He has a starring role in the animated lion-drama Father of the Pride (2004-05) as Hunter, a shy, anxiety-ridden Lord of the Rings nerd. That is, basically Juni as a lion.  In one episode, his grandfather Sarmoti thinks that he is gay, or as the fan wiki says, "homosexual; but this is absolutely not true."  Rather homophobic, aren't you, fan wiki?

Then things start to go downhill.  In a 2006 episode of Criminal Minds,  Daryl plays a teenager who charges men to watch him do bondage videos.  So he has an OnlyFans site?  The agents convince him that what he is doing constitutes prostitution, and will put him in danger from internet predators.  It is all presented as extremely sleazy, and one can't help but conclude that being gay is always seedy and sordid.  

Normal Adolescent Behavior (2007) is an anti-hookup cautionary tale,with no gay content: three girls and three guys in a friendship group pair off randomly.  Daryl appears as Nathan, who crushes on the mother of one of the girls. Ugh.

Raviv Ullman, formerly Phil of the Future, plays one of the guys in the friendship group.

Next Daryl played Tim Scottson in 7 episodes of Weeds (2005-12), about suburban marijuana growers. He shot his stepmother Nancy Botwin because he assumed that she was responsible for his father's death, but she recovered and hired him as her assistant.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (2011) has Daryl planning the perfect prom for his girlfriend, but when her two friends tag along, things go crazy, with a car crash, armed thugs, Satanists, and an amorous lady biker.

In The Green Inferno (2013), some student activists go to the Peruvian jungle for ecological stuff, and are captured by a cannibal tribe.  

A cannibal tribe?  I thought the "spear-throwing savages" trope went out with Johnny Quest. But at least the guy dragging Daryl toward the cooking pot has nice abs and a basket.

Daryl gets a girlfriend and displays his dick before being eaten.

More Daryl dick after the break