For the last couple of decades, Ian McKellen has been at the forefront of the gay rights struggle and more than virtually any other out actor has been incredibly vocal about effecting change – whether it was co-founding Stonewall, lending his talents to gay rights campaigns or indeed talking about it in interviews.
However Sir Ian didn’t actually come out until he was 49. At the time (it was 1988) he felt compelled to make a stand against Section 28, the since repealed homophobic UK legislation that banned ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools, and essentially banned any mention of it.
Now McKellen has been talking to Vanity Fair, saying he wishes he’d come out sooner. When asked if he wished he hadn’t left it so long, he says, “Yes. Because the minute I came out, I felt immediately better in every way. I felt relieved that I wasn’t lying. You know, when I was growing up in 1950s England, there were no gay clubs I knew about. There were no bars. Homosexuals were shamed publicly and imprisoned. You were on your own, looking over your shoulder all the time, hoping in the handshake of a stranger that he might be somebody gay.”
Indeed he says his sexuality played into his decision to try his hand at acting when he was a young man, “I’d heard you could meet queers. So it proved… I was never closeted with friends and colleagues in the professional theatre, but I wasn’t out to my closest blood relatives.”
As to the repercussions of coming out, he says, “There have been no negatives whatsoever.”
The interview also touches of whether he minds being known as Gandalf rather than being defined by his more highbrow stage roles, but he even manages to come up with a gravestone inscription he wouldn’t mind, ‘Here lies Gandalf. He came out’.
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