Ian McKellen is naming names.
In a new interview with The Guardian, the 86-year-old Lord of the Rings actor, who publicly came out as gay in 1988, revealed that Star Wars actor Alec Guinness advised him to stay quiet and not advocate for gay rights.
Alec, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first three Star Wars movies, allegedly told Ian to “withdraw” his support for the U.K. gay rights lobby group Stonewall, which was fighting for government protections to ensure gay citizens were treated equally under the law.
“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,” Ian recalled. “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 U.K. lesbians and gays equally under the law with the rest of the population.”
“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,” the X-Men actor continued. “Advice from an older generation, which I didn’t follow.”
Ian said that he was recently reminded of the conversation with Alec, who died in 2000, after watching the tour “Two Halves of Guinness,” a solo show that stars Zeb Soanes as Alec and, according to Ian, “hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him, I suppose.”
In an interview from last year, Ian shared his thoughts on young gay actors staying in the closet.
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