‘To be really successful, you have to be sexy in a straight way’: Ben Whishaw on libidinous New York and playing Peter Hujar
Peter Hujar captured a queer Manhattan demi-monde that is now lost to Aids. Whishaw reveals what he learned playing the photographer in a minimalist film being hailed by some as a masterpiece
Alex Needham
Tuesday 16 December 2025
On 19 December 1974, the photographer Peter Hujar went round to his writer friend Linda Rosenkrantz’s apartment in New York, where she asked him to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He talked in great detail about taking Allen Ginsberg’s portrait for the New York Times (it didn’t go well – Ginsberg was too performative for the kind of intimacy Hujar craved). He also described the Chinese takeaway he ate and how his pal Vince Aletti came round to have a shower. And he fretted about not being paid by Elle magazine.
