THE EXCUSE THAT every closeted gay actor makes about not acknowledging his or her sexual orientation publicly is that they will be typecast in gay roles. So, Sean Hayes camps it up on “Will & Grace” and Jodie Foster plays a widow in “Flightplan,” but neither will answer questions about their orientation so they can continue to win coveted acting roles.

Such actors could learn a thing or two from Rupert Everett, who has been openly gay since his breakthrough role as a gay student in 1984’s “Another Country.” Though he had his biggest Hollywood hits as gay characters in 1997 with “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and 2000’s abysmal “The Next Best Thing,” Everett has fashioned an equally successful career playing straight men.

He’s played straight royals in 1994’s “The Madness of King George” and 2004’s “Stage Beauty,” he’s played straight in big-screen Oscar Wilde interpretations like 2002’s “Importance of Being Earnest” and 1999’s “An Ideal Husband,” and he even played a straight fairy in 1999’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He was even deemed suitable for cartoons as the voice of the straight Prince Charming in 2004’s “Shrek 2.”

Everett is living proof that a gay actor can, indeed, still win plenty of roles even after coming out and playing gay parts in mainstream movies. He’s so successful that his latest role isn’t only a straight character, but is one of the iconic figures of the Western canon. In an upcoming edition of PBS’ “Masterpiece Theater,” which airs on Sunday, Oct. 23, at 9 p.m., Everett plays the title role in “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking.”

THE CLASSIC LITEARY character has been played by countless actors in countless permutations, but most of them captured the haughty intellectualism of the sleuth quite well. Everett, and the movie as a whole, take a different tack.

We discover Holmes, so smart and jaded that he’s bored by life, in an opium den, unwilling to help his old friend Dr. Watson (Ian Hart) solve a case of young aristocratic girls who keep turning up dead with a silk stocking down their throats and another used to strangle them.

However, the thrill of the hunt soon seduces Holmes and, as the game gets afoot, he gives up the drugs and focuses on proving his arrogant brilliance to everyone around.

While the movie is well shot in a moody atmosphere, the case itself is a bit different. This isn’t the stuff of missing wills and long-lost family members that the detective unearthed in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Instead, with an entirely new script by Allan Cubitt, we see a sexually motivated serial killer and Holmes relying more on what will be called forensics when it’s invented rather than clever observation and deduction.

In fact, this is “CSI: Victorian England” and Everett’s Holmes is very similar to Gil Grissom, the curmudgeonly lead character on CBS’ “CSI” who is more interested in his work than his personal life and snarls at anyone he deems intellectually inferior.

Here, Holmes echoes a similar sentiment when talking to Watson’s American psychoanalyst fiancée (Helen McCrory). He tells her that he lives only for his work and has “no time for women.” Gay viewers will, no doubt, see this as Everett playing Holmes as a gay man. However, this gay actor who has fashioned a career out of straight roles knows better. He is just interpreting an old favorite for the modern age.

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