Sir Ian McKellen: ‘I regret not coming out until I was 49’
The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit star Sir Ian McKellen has told Vanity Fair magazine that he regrets not coming out until he was 49 and that he would have done earlier if he knew that his reception would be so warm
The co-founder of gay rights charity Stonewall said: “There have been no negatives whatsoever… 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.”
The star said that one of the reasons he got into acting was the acceptability of gay men within the profession. “I’d heard you could meet queers. So it proved,” he said. “I was never closeted with friends and colleagues in the professional theatre, but I wasn’t out to my closest blood relatives.”
In reality, Sir Ian’s two best friends were also hiding that they were gay and it wasn’t until 20 years later that they discovered the truth.
He added: “There was nothing positive about homosexuality in the newspapers and it was against the law to make love. I knew people my age who’d been sent to prison for doing it! When I tell schoolchildren that, they can’t believe it.”
“It will be a popular move, I know, and I’m glad your major political parties have embraced it, supported too by the younger generation who see things a lot more clearly than people of my age.
“My support is with you and I hope that by the time I return to Middle-earth I might even be able to get married there.”
