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Omar Apollo is rolling through a lot of firsts in his life.

The singer, who rode the wave of a critically acclaimed debut album Ivory all the way to the Grammys with a best new artist nomination, offered an immediate yes when asked to make his acting debut in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer opposite Daniel Craig. The A24 film finds him playing a hustler who has a steamy one-night stand with Craig’s William Lee in Mexico City complete with a sex scene and full frontal nudity — more firsts for the 27-year-old Indiana native. His foray into Hollywood has since taken him to the Venice Film Festival and the recent Lacma Art + Film Gala, all new experiences for the rising star.

“It’s cool to be invited. It’s sweet,” Apollo told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday night at the L.A. premiere at DGA Theater Complex. “I don’t...

Daniel Craig delivers a career-best performance in Luca Guadagnino’s romantic drama “Queer,” playing a gay American expat in 1950s Mexico City. The drama, with its explicit love scenes, swept up a packed theater at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday night, earning a 9-minute standing ovation.

When the applause began, Craig looked flushed and misty-eyed as he hugged Guadagnino. The crowd chanted “Luca! Luca! Luca!” while the ovation continued, with each actor coming down the Sala Grande steps from where they sat in the balcony to bow individually. During his turn, Craig blew kisses to the crowd as his wife, Rachel Weisz, smiled proudly.

When Craig and Starkey at last embraced, Guadagnino — and the rest of the audience — erupted in cheers as the two gripped each other in celebration. Pedro Almodóvar, whose new film “The Room Next Door” received the longest standing ovation of the fest so far with 17 minutes,...

Daniel Craig opened up about filming sex scenes for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” during the film’s Venice Film Festival press conference, saying he and co-star Drew Starkey “tried to make it fun.”

“You know as well as I do, there’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. There’s a room full of people watching you,” Craig said. “We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could. Drew is a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with and we kind of had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.”

Based on the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, “Queer” is set in 1950s Mexico City and follows Lee (Craig), an American expat who “spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community,...