Bardem and Banderas

I'm heterosexual and female, not that it matters. I am very impressed that Javier Bardem (who I first saw in Jamon, Jamon - as I recall, he performed oral sex on a very pregnant Penelope Cruz in that movie, or was it another equally famous actress?) and Antonio Banderas (who I remember starring in one of my favorite early Almodovar movies, The Law of Desire) both do great jobs playing gay guys even though they are very straight in real life.
This may have to do with Spain and the Spanish Cinema. Almodovar makes fantastic movies that feature incredibly raunchy heterosexual sex scenes and yet he often has drag queens playing prominent roles, too. Then he makes a movie like 'The Flower of My Secret' which has such a touching love story between a middle aged man and woman - I love to watch it again and again. This works very well in Spain - he is a true artist/filmmaker and really the only director a lot of Americans think of when they think of Spain.
Spain is such an intensely Catholic country, like France, and yet it produces, like France, such erotic movies with its greatest actors and actresses.
Both Bardem and Banderas are incredibly sexy in my opinion!