Lenny Kravitz was inspired by Tom Ford to play stylist Cinna in The Hunger Games.

The singer-and-actor had not heard about the Suzanne Collins novel - which tells the tale of a future world where youngsters are made to fight to the death for TV audiences - but wanted to make his character as toned down as possible so he wasn't "too outrageous."

"I'll be quite frank with you - I didn't know about Hunger Games - so when I'm telling kids and they say, 'Who are you playing?' and I say Cinna, they go, 'Oh you're playing the gay guy.' The question was 'How far do we go with him?' The idea was to pull it back and create a character that's more like a Tom Ford or an Yves Saint Laurent so he wouldn't be too outrageous. He's classic, he's got his gold eyeliner. I kind of played him in the middle."

The 47-year-old star did not go into the role thinking that the character was gay, but merely eccentric. "I thought about it, and I read the book and I don't see that he is or isn't [gay]. He's a designer, he's a stylist, he has gold eyeliner-that doesn't mean anything either way."