Out British actor Sir Ian McKellen has
revealed that he never came out to his parents but believes they
would have accepted him.
The 78-year-old McKellen, who first
spoke publicly about his sexuality during an interview with the BBC
in 1988, is best known for playing Gandalf in the The Lord of the
Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and Magneto in the X-Men
films.
In an Attitude cover story,
McKellen said that his parents would have been shocked by his
sexuality but accepting.
“What my parents believed in was a
Christian view of the world, a non-conformist view of the world in
which people cared about each other, whether they knew them or not,”
McKellen said.
“They believed that people should
always be treated with respect and sympathy, which is why I think if
I had come out to my parents it might've been a surprise and a shock
to them, but they would have accepted it. That's what I like to
think.”
“If being gay marks you as being
different, in the sense that you are treated differently by other
people, I was sort of fulfilling the man who my parents would've
wanted me to be. Which is actually nothing to do with being gay,”
he added.
(Related: Ian
McKellen feature-length documentary in the works.)