Ian McKellen Says His Life ‘Changed for the Better’ After He Came Out as Gay

Ian McKellen remembers how he felt when he discovered that he was gay back in 1988.

As McKellen, 84, spoke with Diversity recently about his career and new film Criticthe acting icon recalled that his decision to come out as gay helped change the way he approached his work and personal life.

“Almost overnight, everything in my life changed for the better – my relationships with people and my whole attitude towards acting changed,” McKellen told the news outlet.

McKellen came out during a January 27, 1988 appearance on British radio in which he argued against proposed laws in England that would make it illegal for local authorities to “promote homosexuality”.

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Actor Sir Ian McKellen at the UK launch event for ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at Spencer House on February 23, 2017 in London, England.

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McKellen has archived the transcript of that radio appearance on his personal website. “I think it’s offensive to anyone who, like me, is gay, aside from the whole thing about what can and can’t be taught to children,” he said of the law at the time, while discussing the issue with then-Sunday Telegraph edited by Peregrine Worsthorne.

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The actor later recalled his decision to come forward in an article he wrote for The main gay magazine in December 1988, also archived on his website. Although he noted that many people in his private life already knew he was gay, he admitted at the time that coming out was a decision that forced itself on him.

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“We discussed the new law on the air and, irritated by the bland pomposity [Worsthorne’s] homophobia, and, frankly, without thinking, I mentioned to the few thousand listening to Radio 3 that I oppose Section 28 because I’m gay,” he wrote at the time.

“The fact that I actually came out probably surprised me more than being gay shocked any listener who knows my work,” McKellen added in the article. “Indeed, some of them wrote that they had known for years that I was gay and didn’t care. When I told my stepmother, soon after, she said the same.”

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In McKellen’s new film Critic, stars as a closeted theater critic in 1930s London who concocts an elaborate scheme to save his job in a homophobic time period. The film’s director, Anand Tucker, reflected on McKellen’s personal connection to the project in Diversity article.

“I don’t agree with the idea that you have to be gay to play a gay role,” Tucker said. “But in Ian’s case, there’s something about his own lived experience that allowed him to bring a kind of urgent truth to the role. He had a deep understanding of what it means to be an outsider who is shunned for the truth of who he is.”

Critic make your own world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday.

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Source: HIS Education