Ian McKellen has got a new project. Alongside with Vicious producer Gary Reich and The Brooklyn Brothers agency founder Jackie Stevenson, he is planning a series of four short films – under the banner LGBT Heroes – made by and about the LGBT community. THR reports that they’re hoping to get top notch filmmakers and actors involved in the initiative.

While Facebook has already stepped forward to partner with the film series and stream the first movie, McKellen is looking for other brands and broadcasters to help with some of the other films. The actor has previously resisted working with brands in his career, saying of Coca-Cola’s Dasani water’s attempt to recruit him for its British launch, he says, “I thought, ‘I can’t. I feel I’m selling my soul, and my soul is worth more than this.'”

However, he thinks it makes sense for this project, partly because of how brands have been supporting the LGBT community. “I’ve been impressed with gay rights all over the world, how much commerce wants to be involved,” McKellen says, “Hollywood, to crudely sum it up, has tended to deal with fantasy, tended to deal with escape. Branding has to be up to date otherwise. [Brands] come up with a response to the world as it really is. It’s a much different approach to anything that Hollywood would do.”

They are hoping to get directors Wachowskis and Tom Ford to direct two of the four films, while McKellen will appear on at least one of them, with other currently unknown actors also attached.

Those behind the project want those interested in getting involved – including brands, actors, broadcasters and anyone else with ideas – to contact them via LGBTheroes.info.

There’s a lot of talk about the intersection of masculinity/femininity and sexuality, with many still feeling male homosexuality as being feminine, and even some gay people feeling that bottoms are less masculine, or that they must put comments about the need for masculinity on their gay dating profile. Now Ian McKellen has stepped into the debate, suggesting he thinks that gay men are more masculine than their straight counterparts.

After all – it involves two men, so is that more masculine that having a man and a woman?

In an interview with The Evening Standard featuring McKellen and his BFF Patrick Stewart, Ian says, “I’ve probably played even more military men than Patrick. Gandalf is a soldier, Magneto is a soldier, Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And I think the reason is because I want my revenge on them all…The people who start wars, perpetuate them and glory in them. ‘God save our gracious Queen, send her victorious?’ I’m sorry. What does that mean?… If that’s what masculinity is then I don’t want any part of it at all.”

McKellen then adds, “I think gay men are more masculine than straight men. Because, guess what? They love other men!…So when bully boys say: ‘Faggot!’ you say, ‘That’s right, I’m with the boys.’”

It’s not a comment that academics will be using in years to come as a profound statement on gender theory, but he’s sort of got a point, even if it ignores a lot of the issues.

In the last couple of weeks there’s unsurprisingly been a lot of anger and frustration at the fact that out of 20 acting nominees in this year’s Oscar, no people of color are represented (mirroring what happened last year), and the likes of Straight Outta Compton and other films concentrating on non-white characters were completely shut out. However, Ian McKellen has stepped forward to suggest that the problems with diversity at the Oscars don’t just extend to people of color, but also affect women and gay people too.

In a new interview with Sky News, McKellen says, “The Oscars have a very special place in the lives of American actors, even more so than here. As a representative of the industry they are in, the film industry is receiving complaints that I fully sympathise with.”

“It’s not only black people who have been disregarded by the film industry, it used to be women and certainly gay people to this day. These are all legitimate complaints, and the Oscars is the focus of these complaints at the moment.”

He certainly has a point, with only one female having ever won the Best Director gong, and few ever being nominated. No openly gay actor has ever won an Oscar either (although admittedly a decent amount have been nominated for playing gay characters).

However while the focus has been on the Oscars themselves and the diversity issues of the Academy’s membership (they are predominantly white males, with an average age of 62), to a large extent it is symptomatic of Hollywood itself. While some black (male) actors have become huge stars, most still face severe limits on the type and number of roles they’re offered. Similarly female actors are often trapped in stereotyped supporting roles in the biggest films, while openly gay people are often seen as too much of a commercial risk (particularly in regards to how they might affect box office in everywhere from homophobic countries to the American Mid-West) meaning they rarely get offered genuinely massive roles.

It often seems to be two steps forwards one step back in Hollywood, as for a supposedly liberal industry, it’s incredibly conservative both in terms of what it thinks will be commercial and what it will take a ‘risk’ on, which makes it an uphill battle to ensure proper Hollywood diversity.

While it’s traditionally thought that actors are either going to make it in the movies when they’re young or not at all, it certainly wasn’t true for Ian McKellen, who as a young actor gained an impressive reputation on the stage but didn’t get many film roles.

Then, in 1998 in response to Maggie Thatcher’s anti-gay policies, he came out, which many at the time thought was career suicide. However as he points out on a new THR podcast, the opposite was true and he started scoring great movie role, something he partially credits to coming out helping improve his acting skills, aiding his versatility..

“It all happened after coming out,” he says. “I had no idea this silly thing was a weight on my shoulders.”

“That’s my message to anyone in this town who thinks ‘I’ve got to stay in the closet to be successful in films’. I didn’t.”

He also has a message for the current crop of actors worried about coming out, saying, “Do you want to be a famous movie star who has love scenes with ladies and in private be an unhappy gay? There’s no choice. Forget the career, dear. Go and do something else … A closet’s a really nasty place to live, you know? It’s dirty, it’s dusty, it’s full of skeletons. You don’t want it. Open that door — fling it wide and be yourself.”

The quick look at his IMDB [age shows that he really did see an explosion in his screen credits after coming out, and he has since scored two Oscar nominations and become one of the most beloved septuagenarians on the planet, thanks to the likes of X-Men and Lord Of The Rings – all while being out, proud and never afraid to talk about his sexuality.