Early reviews of the Alan Turing biopic “The Imitation Game” accused the film of being “strangely shy” about its protagonist’s homosexuality, but actor Matthew Goode says a lack of sex scenes doesn’t mean Turing’s sexuality isn’t part of the movie.

Goode, who plays cryptanalyst Hugh Alexander in the film (and stars alongside his longtime friend Benedict Cumberbatch), explained to HuffPost Live’s Ricky Camilleri on Monday why the film doesn’t show Turing romantically engaging with men on screen:

Some people will think it’s a shame there was no suggestion or depiction of [the sex life of] Alan Turing, who is a gay icon because of what he went through and what happened in [1954] where he took his own life. But I think, in some ways, to do this man’s story [and include his sex life], it would do him a slight disservice because he was so private. No one at Bletchley Park knew that he was a homosexual, so therefore the film is merely mirroring what was going on in his own life. I know that may seem cowardly … but to show a scene of him having sex with another man without any knowledge or the truth in it, I think could have been very risky. I mean, there will always be a “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,” but I’m really glad we didn’t.

“Imitation Game” director Morten Tyldum has called the absence of gay sex in the film “a very conscious choice,” while Cumberbatch added that if viewers need to see sex to understand his character, “then all is lost for any kind of subtle storytelling.”

Watch Goode discuss Alan Turing’s homosexuality in the video above, and catch his full HuffPost Live conversation here.

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