MCU Actor Dave Bautista Reveals He Covered Up a Homophobic Tattoo

Dave Bautista, known for his time in the WWE and for playing Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Guardians of the Galaxy films, revealed he covered up a tattoo he'd dedicated to someone who later on shared some homophobic rhetoric.

In a video breakdown with GQ discussing the nearly fifty hours he's spent under the needle getting inked, he points to one on his arm and says, "Oh, this one? It used to be a team logo."

He continued: "I was part of a team of a person I considered a friend and someone I really looked up to. And then he later came out publicly with some anti-gay statements and, you know, turned out to be an extreme homophobe, and so I had a huge issue with it."

"It's a personal issue with me," he further noted. "My mom's a lesbian, and I could no longer call him a friend so I had it covered up with this."

Bautista, who will leave the Marvel Universe following Guardians of the Galaxy 3, was part of the MCU's first gay bar in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. He also recently appeared in the Netflix smash Glass Onion, a widely celebrated sequel to Knives Out.

Bautista has also been a vocal and longtime supporter of the LGBTQ+ communities, thanks in part to his mom. In June 2022, the actor posted an Instagram picture of himself wearing a shirt with a rainbow that says "Be You."

In the caption, he wrote, "I was always proud of who my mom was because she was always proud of who she was. In your face, fuck you if you don't like it, unapologetically loud and proud. And her son paid attention. BE LOUD, BE PROUD, BE YOU."

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