Josh Hutcherson, Straight Talker

Photography by Nino Muñoz | Styling by Neil Rodgers

We’ve barely started lunch, and I’m nowhere near my usual open-ended sexuality question, when Josh Hutcherson offers this: “I would probably list myself as mostly straight.”

That “mostly” is what makes Hutcherson winningly uninhibited, but also typical of his generation. New research published in The New York Times in 2010 shows that an increasing number of guys his age identify as “mostly straight,” and Hutcherson’s ease in embracing ambiguity over neat and secure boxes speaks to his self-assurance.

“Maybe I could say right now I’m 100% straight,” he says. “But who knows? In a fucking year, I could meet a guy and be like, Whoa, I’m attracted to this person.”

Hutcherson grew up in Union, Ky., a small town close to the Ohio border, and his slouchy, chill California vibe is still tinged with a soft Southern accent. Everything he says sounds easygoing. “I’ve met guys all the time that I’m like, Damn, that’s a good-looking guy, you know?” he says. “I’ve never been, like, Oh, I want to kiss that guy. I really love women. But I think defining yourself as 100% anything is kind of near-sighted and close-minded.”

Hutcherson is not exactly an average 21-year-old. He’s one of the stars of the blockbuster Hunger Games films, he’s rich and famous, and he’s self-aware enough to grasp how good he’s got it. Yet his take on sexuality reflects a healthy skepticism of labels that’s helping shift American public opinion on LGBT equality.

According to Cornell University psychology professor Ritch Savin-Williams, whose work was the basis of that New York Times op-ed, many “mostly straight” young men see the fight for LGBT equality as the defining civil rights movement of their time, just as Hutcherson does. But they’re neither just allies nor passing through before coming out as gay or bi. “These are the Kinsey 1s,” Savin-Williams says, meaning they fall just to the queer side of totally heterosexual on the famous sliding scale of sexuality. “Their primary object of desire is women. They’re not giving that up—they’re just adding to it.”

Hutcherson seems delighted by the complicated nature of human sexuality, but he doesn’t take sex too seriously—“Sometimes the rhythm isn’t right or you’re trying to make a new position work and it really doesn’t, and you have to laugh”—and isn’t allergic to oversharing. Of nude photos it’s rumored he posted to a dating site, he shrugs off any comment except to say, “I find it so shocking still that nakedness is so shocking.”

He definitely doesn’t understand judgmental attitudes toward gay people, which is why he cofounded Straight But Not Narrow, a youth organization that focuses on arming allied kids with the confidence and tools they need to speak out against homophobia. “Sometimes it’s frustrating to comprehend how people are not OK with it. If you can try to tell me how it’s hurting you, you’re crazy. You’re absolutely crazy. Like, what do you mean it’s not natural? Even if—even if, which, I disagree, but even if—why the fuck do you care?”

SLIDESHOW: JOSH HUTCHERSON: THE HUNGER

Despite his matinee-idol jaw and ability to smolder on command in photographs—and the fact that he spent more than a decade in Hollywood before being allowed to legally drink—Hutcherson is almost disconcertingly nice and level-headed. At our low-key, out-of-the-way Los Angeles lunch spot, he runs into two separate groups of people he knows. When he goes over to talk to some guys from Twenty One Pilots, a band he loves and met at a concert in Ohio, he politely reintroduces himself.

It helps that he was clearly well-adjusted before getting into the business. The Hutcherson family Golden Rule was “Treat people the way you want to be treated,” a simple moral compass that kept him out of trouble when he left Kentucky and started acting at age 9. He worked steadily playing a series of sweet but-moody kids on TV and the big screen, studying with tutors on set. But unlike some child stars, he doesn’t have regrets about skipping out on school—except one: “I would have liked to start a GSA or help out kids that were feeling bullied or discriminated against.”

His breakout role was as Annette Bening and Julianne Moore’s son in The Kids Are All Right. There’s a memorable confrontation with his moms, who are convinced he’s keeping some big secret (they don’t know he and his sister have tracked down their biological dad, played by Mark Ruffalo). “You guys thought I was gay?” he asks, surprised and a little hurt that they thought he’d hide that.

In The Hunger Games, there’s no question that he’s the leader of Team Nice Guy, a.k.a. Peeta Mellark. When he’s chosen at random to fight to the death against two dozen other teenagers, even Peeta’s mom bets on heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) to ultimately survive the kill-or-be-killed tournament.

Over the four-film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s best-selling books—the first movie made almost $700 million at the box office worldwide; its sequel, Catching Fire, comes out this month—Katniss is torn between her feelings for Peeta, who helps save their lives more than once, and for her best guy friend, the tall, dark, and handsome Gale (Liam Hemsworth). All three sides of the love triangle get stuck in the midst of a massive civil war. “They’re having a tough time,” Hutcherson says.

Maybe because the films are so intense, and because he spends so much time answering the same banal questions at press junkets, Hutcherson seems to relish the opportunity to lighten the mood. When I suggest a threesome might be a more expedient solution to at least some of Peeta’s problems, he immediately agrees: “I know Peeta would be into it, for sure. He’s very sensitive, in touch with his emotions. I think it really might solve a lot of their problems. You know what? I’m going to pitch that idea. Let’s make it a—what’s it called when three people are in a relationship together? A triad?” He rolls his eyes at his own enthusiasm. “That’ll go over well with Middle America.”

In Catching Fire, Peeta and Katniss are sent back to battle other former champions and forge a tentative alliance with the Golden God-like Finnick (Sam Claflin). Lawrence regularly deflects questions about Claflin’s hot body to Hutcherson, who confirms their bromantic bond. “You know there are just times when you meet people in your life and it clicks instantly?” he asks. “It was like that with Sam. I like people that just let me be myself, and I don’t feel like I have to try to be extra-fancy.”