Content Advisory: This article discusses LGBTQ+ advocacy, historical persecution, and public speculation about sexuality. Reader discretion is advised.
Ian McKellen has heard plenty of advice in his career. One piece from a ‘Star Wars’ legend clearly did not stick.
The actor recently answered reader questions for The Guardian and was asked about the worst advice he had ever received. His answer went back to Alec Guinness, the British acting icon best known to global audiences as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy.
McKellen said Guinness once urged him to step back from public advocacy after McKellen helped establish Stonewall, the U.K.’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization.
Ian McKellen Says Alec Guinness Wanted Him To Step Back
McKellen first crossed paths with Guinness around 1979, when he was performing in ‘Bent’, a play about the treatment of gay men in Nazi Germany. Guinness reportedly invited him to dinner backstage.
McKellen said he “stupidly declined” the invitation.
The two actors met again about a decade later. By then, McKellen had become more publicly involved in LGBTQ+ rights. According to him, Guinness did not approve.
“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,” McKellen recalled. McKellen did not take the advice. “Advice from an older generation, which I didn’t follow,” he said.
Guinness Play Brings The Memory Back
McKellen said the moment came back to him after watching the current tour of ‘Two Halves of Guinness’, a solo show about the late actor’s life. The production is part of renewed attention on Guinness around the 25th anniversary of his death.
The play also touches on rumors about Guinness’s sexuality, something McKellen believes Guinness himself would likely have disliked.
“This all came back watching the current tour of ‘Two Halves of Guinness’, a solo show which hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him, I suppose,” McKellen said.
Some biographers have claimed Guinness was once arrested, charged, and fined in court over a gay act in a Liverpool bathroom in 1946. One biographer said Guinness avoided wider publicity because he gave officers the name Herbert Pocket, a character he played in ‘Great Expectations’.
McKellen Still Chooses Advocacy
McKellen’s career has long included both performance and activism.
He has continued speaking publicly about LGBTQ+ rights, closeted actors in Hollywood, and trans-inclusive theater. His view is clearly different from the one Guinness allegedly shared with him decades ago.
For McKellen, the advice to retreat from politics aged badly. He did the opposite. And in doing so, he became one of the most visible LGBTQ+ advocates in global entertainment.
