Ian McKellen claims Alec Guinness advised him to withdraw his support of gay rights
Ian McKellen has claimed that Alec Guinness once told him to “withdraw” his support of gay rights as he thought it was “unseemly” for an actor to be involved in “political affairs”.
The actor recalled the experience during a recent interview with The Guardian, in which he said that the Star Wars star had once invited him to lunch in London, transpiring to have an ulterior motive in his intent.
McKellen said Guinness had “heard about” his work setting up the charity Stonewall, the UK organisation that lobbies for LGBTQ+ rights, but “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 Lord of the Rings star ultimately deemed this to be, “Advice from an older generation, which I didn’t follow.”
McKellen has proudly supported the rights of LGBTQ+ people ever since he came out as gay himself during an interview on BBC radio in 1988.
He has campaigned about this various times in his career, imploring actors to make their sexualities public in an interview last year as “being in the closet is silly,” he said.
In March 2025, the actor told The Times: “Don’t listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine.”
To this end, later in July that year, he also opened a one-night-only production of Shakespeare’s most gender fluid play, Twelfth Night, consisting of a cast of purely transgender actors.
When announcing the production, which took place at The Space in London, McKellen said: “Twelfth Night is perhaps the funniest and most moving of Shakespeare’s plays.”
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