James Marsden covers the new issue of Out Magazine. No, he’s not gay. Out and The Advocate have been doing this more and more – they’ve been using straight male LBGT allies on their covers. Chris Pine was recently on the cover of Out too, remember? Anyway, I guess Marsden is a LBGT Ally because he’s promoting The Butler – where Marsden plays John F. Kennedy – which was directed by out-and-proud director Lee Daniels. Beyond that, the interview is pretty much a standard-issue celebrity profile. Marsden barely speaks about anything having to do with gay rights. You can read the full profile here and here are some highlights:

Marsden on being good-looking: “I know I have a face like a model. But I’m actually just a goofy drama nerd underneath. I’m actually less comfortable being the smoldering hot guy. I’d rather play a goofball or a rube than a steamy leading-man role,” he insists. “I’ve never been that guy — I was a skinny loner in high school.”

Doing comedic roles: “I think the key to comedy — and I learned this on the set of Enchanted and Hairspray — is that the audience needs to feel like everyone is having fun,” he says. “It’s so obvious to me and the audience when an actor is having a miserable time doing a movie.”

On John F. Kennedy: “His speeches were like poetry,” he says before slipping into a pitch-perfect impression, quoting Kennedy’s famed civil rights address of 1963. “The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, north and south.”

Marsden’s main career plan: “Not to sell out.” This means, as he puts it, “no sh-tty horror movies for big paychecks” and turning down long-term offers on not-to-be-named police procedural shows with silly dialogue and stilted acting. “I never set out to make a bad movie,” he explains. “Some movies just turn out bad, and I want to scream, ‘Why did you pick that take?!’ Then there are some movies that I’ve been in that I was sure people would laugh at, that have become huge. I thought The Notebook was going to be a schmaltzy Movie of the Week–type thing, and here we are!” he says, laughing.

But sometimes he was too picky: “I’m a gentleman,” he says delicately [of a role he passed on]. One such misstep may have been passing up a supporting role in a certain rom-com about male strippers helmed by an Oscar-winning director. But to hell with all that, he says. “So far, I’ve been incredibly fortunate in the roles I’ve been offered. Sometimes I worry that I’ll stop getting offered these ‘break in case of emergency’ sell-out parts.”

Getting recognized: “They say, ‘How do I know you?’ So then I start profiling them. If you have a 7-year-old girl? Hop. A 19-year-old, college-student-age girl? The Notebook or 27 Dresses. Fanboy geek? X-Men.”

Funny story: A day before our interview, Marsden was at his local grocery store when he noticed the girl at the checkout surveying him. As he helped her bag his produce, she leaned in close and whispered, “You’ll never believe who was just in here.” Who? “Louis C.K.” squealed the star-struck clerk, and sent Cyclops on his way.

[From Out Magazine]

Well, he doesn’t lack confidence. I get tired of celebrities always trying to convince people that they were dorks or geeks when they were younger, and I’m not buying it in Marsden’s case. Out talks about how he dropped out of college and left Oklahoma to come to Hollywood, and he started finding work almost immediately. Real dorks and geeks would have struggled longer, right? James Marsden has always been handsome and popular and confident. That’s what I think.

Photos courtesy of Matthias Vriens-McGrath for OUT Magazine.