THE HOLLYWOOD CLOSET

Are English film makers and actors less uptight about sexual ambiguity on screen than their American counterparts?

Consider:

Daniel Day Lewis became the find of 1986 by starring as the effeminate heterosexual in James Ivory’s “A Room With a View” and the macho homosexual in “My Beautiful Laundrette” (now he’s a macho heterosexual in his major big-screen debut, in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” from Czech Milan Kundera’s novel, with Phil Kaufman directing).

Playwright Alan Bennett, author of the gay-themed “Another Country,” has written the script for “Prick Up Your Ears,” a film bio of the late gay playwright Joe Orton, who was murdered by his lover. It’s to be directed by Stephen Frears, who also did “Laundrette.” (Quipped Lewis: “It remains to be seen whether anyone will go see the picture, besides gay S&M; devotees.”)

American director Ivory, who plans to film E. M. Forster’s posthumously published gay love story “Maurice,” told us, “We’ll be looking for British actors. They’re less uptight, but also more . . . multifaceted.”

Added Lewis: “We all expect to play gay and straight, sooner or later, except when we work in Hollywood.”