Screen and stage veteran Sir Ian McKellen urges young gay actors to come out, liking their situation to star footballers in the UK premier league.
“I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it. I feel sorry for any famous person who feels they can’t come out. Being in the closet is silly — there’s no need for it. Don’t listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine.”
McKellen added that, although the UK remains more tolerant than the US where multiplate states are seeking to end legal same-sex marriage, he lamented there has still never been an openly gay best actor Oscar winner, something he likened to the UK’s football premier league. He said:
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“In women’s sport it’s not an issue. I would imagine young footballers are probably, like actors, getting very bad advice from agents who are worried about their own incomes. But the first Premier League footballer to come out will become the most famous footballer in the world, with all the agencies begging for his name on their products.”
McKellen himself came out in 1988 aged 48, the year after he had played a gay monarch in Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II, a theatre production that was transferred to TV, where its viewers saw their first small screen same-sex kiss, between lovers Edward II and Piers Gaveston.
At the time of the play being performed in Scotland, McKellen recalled in The Times that a local councillor objected to the play being performed within a Church of Scotland-owned property, but police declared it “fit for consumption,” McKellen recalled. “Thanks to all the publicity the play sold out.”
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