Alec Guinness Urged Ian McKellen to Drop Stonewall Support
Ian McKellen says alec guinness told him to withdraw his support for Stonewall and keep out of political affairs. The recollection comes from a lunch the actor says he shared with Guinness, and it adds a sharper line to the long-running debate over whether performers should speak publicly on gay rights.
Stonewall and the lunch in Pimlico
McKellen said Guinness had heard about his work to establish Stonewall, the U.K. gay rights lobby group that was pressing for government protections so lesbians and gays were treated equally under the law. He said Guinness thought it was “somewhat unseemly for an actor to dabble in public or political affairs” and “advised me, sort of pleaded with me, to withdraw.”
McKellen said he did not follow that advice. The account matters because it places a private exchange between two major British actors inside a public argument that still shapes how celebrity activism is read: as a risk, a duty, or both.
McKellen at 48 in 1988
McKellen came out as gay in 1988 at age 48 during a radio interview, so the Stonewall conversation sits inside a much longer public record of him speaking on the issue. Last year, he told The Times of London that he feels sorry for fellow actors who feel they cannot come out as gay, and he added: “I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it.”
He also said: “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. Get into the sunshine.” That makes Guinness’s warning read less like a one-off caution and more like a snapshot of an older industry instinct that McKellen later rejected in public.
Two Halves of Guinness
McKellen said he was reminded of the encounter after watching the touring play Two Halves of Guinness, which stars Zeb Soanes as the Star Wars actor. He said the show “hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him, I suppose.”
The play gave McKellen a reason to revisit a conversation that now reads as both personal and historical: one actor urging caution, another refusing it, and a rights campaign that was still fighting for basic legal equality. For readers, the practical takeaway is simple — McKellen is still using his own history to argue that silence is not a neutral choice.
