English actor Ian McKellen called on closeted gay actors to “come out” and “get into the sunshine” in an interview published Sunday in The Times of London. McKellen, 85, came out in a radio interview with the BBC in 1988, before going on to co-found an LGBTQ rights charity in the U.K. called Stonewall a year later.
“I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it,” McKellen told The Times. “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.”
The “Lord of the Rings” and “X-Men” star, who was nominated for Oscars in 1999 and 2002, noted that there has never been an openly gay Academy Award winner for best actor, nor an openly gay U.K. prime minister or Premier League soccer player.
“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 speculated.
“In this country, I hope because of gay marriage, more people are less frightened and more accepting of gay people,” McKellen said of England. “Elsewhere the picture is not so good.”
Same-sex couples have been able to marry in England since 2014, a year before gay marriage became legal across the U.S.
McKellen has long championed LGBTQ rights. Though some fellow actors knew he was gay beforehand, he didn’t come out publicly until he was 48. At the time, Section 28 — a law prohibiting local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales from “promoting homosexuality” — was under consideration, and was enforced a few days later. The charity McKellen co-founded, named for the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, eventually led a successful campaign to repeal the law.
McKellen told The Times he’s currently mentoring a fellow openly gay actor who will be playing the titular character in a stage production of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II,” a dramatized tale of a 14th century love affair between the king of England and another man. McKellen starred in a 1969 production of the play in Scotland, when homosexuality was illegal in the country.
“You don’t have to be gay to play Edward II,” he told The Times. “But it helps.”