Sir Ian McKellen has revealed a legend of classic Hollywood once begged him not to campaign for gay rights.
The X-Men and Lord of the Rings star, 86, is a founding member of the LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall UK, established in 1989.
He came out while fighting against Section 28, a law that prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools.
Since then, he’s been a vocal advocate of LGBTQ+ rights and remains one of the field’s most high-profile and prominent figures.
In a new interview, he said that Star Wars actor Sir Alec Guinness once urged him to back down from his work with Stonewall, attributing this advice to the thespian’s own ‘latent bisexuality.’
This single recommendation, he says, is the ‘worst’ he was ever given.
Answering readers’ questions for The Guardian, Sir Ian described how he was taken out to lunch by the Obi-Wan Kenobi star, who had an ulterior motive for the invitation.
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‘He had heard about my work to establish Stonewall – a lobby group to present to the government and the world at large the case for treating UK lesbians and gays equally under the law with the rest of the population,’ Sir Ian said.
The screen legend continued: ‘He thought it somewhat unseemly for an actor to dabble in public or political affairs and advised me, sort of pleaded with me, to withdraw.’
It was advice – ‘from an older generation’ – that he duly ignored.
He went on to say that he’d been reminded of this exchange while watching the stage play Two Halves of Sir Alec, which, in Sir Ian’s words, ‘hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him.’
In 2001, three biographies alleged that Ealing Comedies actor Sir Alec, who died in 2000, hid a ‘homosexual side’ from the public.
This included the claim that he was arrested, charged, and fined in 1946, for a ‘homosexual’ act in a public lavatory.
According to The Guardian, this went unreported due to Sir Alec giving a false name (Herbert Pocket, of Great Expectations fame) so as to keep his secret buried.
Author Sheridan Morley told the newspaper that, if news of the conviction had come out, then ‘it would have traumatised him.’
Written by Mark Burgess, the one-person play, Two Halves of Guinness, explores the life and career of Sir Alec, including the subject of his sexuality.
‘There is an understated undercurrent of gay sex,’ reads The Reviews Hub’s coverage of the play, ‘but it is an overwhelmingly affectionate portrayal of a great actor.’
In 2023, Sir Ian reflected on his own coming out journey, describing it as a ‘life-changing’ journey.
‘Almost overnight, everything in my life changed for the better – my relationships with people and my whole attitude toward acting changed,’ he said to Variety.
‘The kind of acting that I had been good at was all about disguise – adopting funny voices and odd walks,’ the Lord Of The Rings actor explained.
‘It was about lying to the world. I was no longer in the situation where I was running alongside the character, explaining it to the audience. I just became the character.’
He went on to talk about how difficult it might be for non-gay people to relate to his struggles, speaking of how ‘people who are not gay just simply don’t know how it damages you to be lying about what you are and be ashamed of yourself.
‘I was brought up at a time when it was illegal for me to have sex with a man. And that was not that long ago.’
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