Richard Dyer (born 1945) is an English academic who held a professorship in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London.

Specialising in cinema (particularly Italian cinema), queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender, he was previously a faculty member of the Film Studies Department at the University of Warwick for many years and has held a number of visiting professorships in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

[1] Born in Leeds to a lower-middle class Conservative Party supporting family and raised in the suburbs of London during the 1940s and 1950s, Dyer studied French (as well as English, German, and Philosophy) at the University of St Andrews.

Throughout his career, he has taught courses on race and ethnicity, film, stardom, Hollywood, Italian cinema, Federico Fellini, and representation.

From biblical images of the crucifixion to lithographs of Little Eva from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin to photographs of the Prince and Princess of Wales during the 1980s, the broad scope of this text allows Dyer to illustrate how whiteness has been and continues to be both invisible and hypervisible, everywhere and nowhere.

Dyer analyses critics' writing, magazines, advertising and films to explore the significance of stardom, with particular reference to Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Jane Fonda, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford, Joan Crawford and John Wayne.

Instead, Dyer looks closely at the ways in which audiences simultaneously construct and consume a particular star's persona, in the process debunking common stereotypes about Garland, Monroe, and Robeson.

Although well received within the academic community, some scholars have criticised the absence of lesbianism in Dyer's definitions and delineation of queer cultural history.

Five years later when the documentary was released on DVD, unused material was edited together to form a one-hour show entitled Rescued From the Closet.