Link to the n*de photos

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) omits the most egregious heterosexualization of recent Peter Pan movies by skipping the usual Peter-Wendy romance, and by making Captain Hook (Jude Law) gay. Well, he's usually gay-coded, but his time around he mentions a childhood boyfriend -- Peter himself (Alexander Molony), who refused to leave Never-Never Land and grow up, while Hook choose an adult career as a pirate.

I got the same rhetoric when I was a kid: "When you grow up, you will drop your same-sex loves to devote your life to what really matters, finding and winning the Girl of Your Dreams." I turned 14, 15, 16, 17 and the joy I felt in masculine smiles never vanished, but my boyfriends began to treat me as a mere chum, someone to discuss girls with. They were Captain Hook leaving Neverland, but I remained, refusing to "grow up."

Some of the other male actors were of interest, including Joshua Pickering (Wendy's brother John Darling), who according to wikipedia is 4'5", a member of the Short Guys Brigade. And Noah Matthews, who plays the gay-coded Lost Boy Slightly: the leader, the only one who remembers anything of his life before Neverland, and the most musical.

Sorry, that's another Noah. Slightly was played by Noah Matthews Matofsky, the first actor with a visible disability to star in a Disney movie, a leap forward in disability representation.

Especially since the character Slightly is not disabled. Noah was cast because the casting director, and then director David Lowery, loved his audition (they also bonded over a discussion of Lord of the Flies).

This was the 16-year old first on-screen acting job, and rather daunting -- he had to spend six months in Canada during the COVID pandemic, spend hours filming in the hot sun, and still do his schoolwork. But he loved the challenge, and there were perks -- the Lost Boys shared an apartment with a pool on the roof, so after the shooting and schoolwork, they had pool parties. Tell me more.

And Michael Darling (the one with the teddy bear) was played by Jacobi Jupe, brother of Noah's crush Noah Jupe (left). It's not everyday that you get to hear all of the gossip about your crush from your roommate.

More after the break

Planning to continue his acting career, Noah is currently studying performing arts at Northbrook College in Worthing, England. In 2025 he appeared in Into the Labyrinth Again: Sarah from the Labyrinth movie (1986) returns to the fantasy world and finds love. I don't know if she finds love with Noah's character.

His film Bird Boy, about a boy with Down Syndrome who wants to break away from societal preconceptions and "fly," was one of four British entries chosen for the Focus on Ability Festival in Australia.

He also hosts drama workshops for actors with learning differences, and is a sought-after guest speaker. As the keynote speaker at the National Down Conference in the U.S. in 2023, he learned to say "I Love You" in 23 languages.

If that's not enough, Noah is also a fashion model for ZBD, an agency "differently abled, visually different, nonbinary, and trans" performers. Their models are categorized by He, She, They, and Kids, with their differences listed. Cyrus, for instance, has a limb difference, and Tyler, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, has vertiligo (patchs of differently pigmented skin). I wasn't really looking at his neck.

With all his activity, Noah still has time for a social life. His Instagram posts mention a lot of plays and movies. For his 18th birthday, he saw Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, with Stephen Fry (who played Wilde in 1997) as Lady Brocknell.