Although he wasn’t the very first actor to come out, Ian McKellen has helped blaze a trail by revealing his sexuality, finding his greatest success in the likes of X-Men and Lord Of The Rings after that, and being very outspoken about gay causes.

Now he’s being talking about being gay to pupils at Acton Burleigh School in North London, with The Telegraph reporting that he told them that while he ‘always knew’ he was gay, for many years he felt unable to talk about it. He eventually came out publicly in 1988, when he was in his 40s, as a reaction to the homophobic Tory policy Section 28, which forbade the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by local authorities.

He feels that like many other gay actors, his skills as an actor were improved because he spent so many years hiding his sexuality. “There was no Graham Norton on the television at that time,” he said, “No gay MPs, no-one talking about gay rights on the radio. So I dealt with it my trying to cut that part of myself off, to hide myself, to choke a part of me. When you are made to feel you are so wrong for being who you are, that’s what you do.

“I think that’s why so many great British actors are gay – we spent so long pretending to be straight, to be someone else, that eventually we became very good at it.”

However while being closeted may have helped his acting, he added, “I learned that coming out was crucial to self-esteem. And I accepted the argument that people who thrived in society’s mainstream and had access to the media could, by telling the truth, help others in the backwaters whose views were never sought and whom society either ignored or abused.

“An actor is more protected than most. These days I daily make this point to anyone who will listen because, when I eventually accepted it on the BBC, it changed my life forever for the better.”

We’ve often commented on BGPS that any positive depiction of gay people on screen before the 1980s is rare, but what about a gay-friendly movie from 1919? Yep, it’s real and believed to be the earliest surviving cinematic work explicitly about LGBT people (although sadly only a 40-minute fragment of the complete work survives).

Now Outfest is teaming up with the UCLA Film & Television Archive to restore the film, Different From The Others, to ensure this incredibly rare piece of gay history is preserved for future generations.

Different From The Others (Anders Als Die Andern) was directed by Richard Oswald and co-written by famed psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the German homosexual emancipation movement in 1897. It is one of a small group of gay-friendly movies made during Germany’s Weimar Era. However this was the only one that escaped destruction by the Nazis, during their purge of all artistic works they felt went against their ideas. Luckily for us, a 40-minute fragment of the movie was found in the Ukraine after the War.

The film is a sympathetic portrayal of a gay violinist and his relationship with his young protégé. The silent film openly criticized German laws that criminalised homosexuality and was also fairly forward-thinking in showing that social stigma was a major cause of suicide among gay men (at the time many presumed high suicide rates were another sign of gay people’s mental ‘degeneracy’). Its subject matter is believed to have sparked censorship laws that closed the door to LGBT cinema for half a century.

Outfest has now launched a Kickstarter campaign hoping to raise at least $5,000 towards the restoration, so if you fancy helping this important project, head over and pledge some cash. After restoring the film, the idea is to also create extra content designed to position the film as an invaluable teaching tool, showing the film’s historical significance. New prints will also be struck, so audiences around the world can be introduced to the film.

Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, commented at the Outfest Legacy Awards earlier this month (via The Advocate), “When the film was first shown in 1919, gay and lesbian audiences must have been amazed that a mainstream fiction feature film would portray their situation as a fact of nature, rather than as a perversion. By preserving these films, UCLA Film and Television Archive, with its partner Outfest, helps guarantee the long and difficult struggle for gay rights is reflected in the cinema … and will be available to future generations.”

It’s an amazing survival and its restoration is well worth supporting, so head over to Kickstarter.

A few days ago we reported on an interview given by Jackie Collins in which she claimed that the reason White Collar star Matt Bomer lost out on the role of Superman was because he was gay. At the time we commented that it was difficult to tell how she might know this, but now it appears it may have been confusion over which Superman he was supposed to be part of (reports said she was talking about Man Of Steel, when it was actually an earlier incarnation he was up for), as well as an assumption it was his sexuality rather than the vagaries of Hollywood that ruled him out.

A source has told E! that the only time Bomer lost out on a Superman role was when Brett Ratner was due to take on the comic character, back in the early 2000s. The source says, “Matt was Brett’s Superman. He would never have not cast Matt because he’s gay. Brett knew Matt was gay. They’re good friends. Matt not being Superman had nothing to do with his sexuality. It was because the director changed.”

After Ratner left, the project became Bryan Singer’s 2006 film Superman Returns. As Singer is gay himself, it’s unlikely he’d have fired Bomer for his sexuality, he just wanted someone who better fitted him own vision of Superman. (That said, the more conspiracy minded might wonder if the studio didn’t want a gay director and actor, especially when you consider they worried after the movie’s release that Superman Return’s lacklustre box office was due to people being put off by ridiculous news reports saying Superman in the film was ‘too gay’).

Collins had claimed, “Matt Bomer, who is the most gorgeous looking guy and the star of White Collar, he was up for the role of Superman. ‘He had not come out of the closet but people in the know knew he was gay. His audition tape went in and he called up the agent. Someone didn’t like him and told them he was gay. They said, ‘No, no, we can’t cast you.’The reason he didn’t get cast was because he was gay.”