Sir Ian McKellen has disclosed that Star Wars actor Alec Guinness once 'pleaded' with him to abandon his active campaigning for gay rights. The 86-year-old stage and screen legend, renowned for playing Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings franchise, publicly came out as gay in 1988 and co-founded the LGBTQ+ lobby group Stonewall a year later.
A Lunchtime Plea
In a new interview with The Guardian, McKellen recounted a lunch meeting with Guinness in 1989 at an Italian restaurant in Pimlico. 'He took me for an Italian lunch in Pimlico, where we chatted about this and that until he brought up the real reason for his invitation,' McKellen said. '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.'
McKellen 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. Advice from an older generation, which I didn't follow.'
Memories Resurfaced by a Play
The memory of that lunch returned to McKellen while watching Two Halves of Guinness, a new play in which actor Zeb Soanes explores episodes from Guinness’s life, including hints at his bisexuality. 'This all came back watching the current tour of Two Halves of Guinness, a solo show which hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him, I suppose,' McKellen said.
Two biographies published in 2001 revealed that Guinness, married to actress and playwright Merula Silvia Salaman from 1938 until his death in 2000, was privately bisexual. One authorised biography claimed Guinness was charged with performing 'a homosexual act' in a public lavatory in 1946, an incident he kept secret by giving his name as Herbert Pocket, the Great Expectations character he played that year.
McKellen’s Regrets and Current Work
McKellen, now one of the world’s most famous gay actors, has expressed regret about not coming out earlier. In 2015, he said he would likely have been 'a different person and a happier one' had he come out before 1988. 'I regret and always shall that I didn’t see the significance of coming out at a much earlier date,' he stated. 'Self-confidence is the most important thing that anybody can have.'
The actor is currently promoting his new art forgery drama The Christophers, co-starring Michaela Coel, and is set to reprise his role as Gandalf in the upcoming The Hunt for Gollum. He recently praised Johnny Depp after working with him on Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, calling him 'effervescent, funny, irreverent, serious – all at the same time.' McKellen added, 'It was a bit of a love fest, really. I fell in love with him. He’s very obliging to his fellow actors. [There was] a wonderful feeling on the set.'
