Sir Ian McKellen says that advice from the late actor Alec Guinness, during a dinner around the late 1980s or early 1990s, discouraged him from speaking publicly about gay rights. McKellen, interviewed by The Guardian, recalls that Guinness invited him to discuss unrelated matters before raising the reason for the meeting: that Guinness had heard about McKellen’s work with Stonewall, the UK lobby group campaigning for equal legal treatment for lesbian and gay people. According to McKellen, Guinness believed it was “unseemly” for an actor to engage in public or political affairs and pleaded with him to withdraw his involvement. McKellen says he did not follow the advice.
The accounts also note that Guinness died in 2000, and that later biographers claimed he was bisexual and chose not to publicly come out during his lifetime. McKellen, who publicly came out as gay in 1994, continues to speak on LGBTQ+ issues, including commenting in 2024 on laws and restrictions affecting transgender people.
