Sir Ian McKellen said he regrets not coming out to his dad before he died.
The Lord of the Rings star recently opened up to BBC journalist Amol Rajan and recalled growing up in Wigan, where he and his family moved shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Despite having a ‘very happy’ childhood, Ian, who has a 'Blue Plaque' at the University of Liverpool, spoke of some regrets he still lives with to this day.
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The 83-year-old said: “There was one thing missing, which was that I don’t remember enough conversations about things that really mattered...I never talked to him (his dad) about being gay.”
Ian was asked whether he “wishes he had,” to which he responded “Oh yes, of course.”
In 1988, Sir Ian came out publicly in a BBC radio interview before going on to co-found LGBT+ rights charity, Stonewall, the following year.
The actor, known for playing Magneto in the X-Men franchise, believes if he had come out to his dad there would have been no “moral judgement.”
Ian added: “The idea that he couldn’t have coped with the fact that his son was gay is inconceivable to me, even though I’m not aware that we had any gay friends or that he’d ever thought about it or that it had any impact on his life.
“Therefore it might have come as some sort of surprise to him, but there would have been no moral judgement.”
The two-time Oscar nominee said his dad would have reacted in the same way his sister did and still loved him regardless.
He said: “When I came out to my sister, she said, ‘Oh I wish you’d told me years ago because I always wanted to talk to you about it.”
Ian's dad had been to see him perform at his first West End show three weeks before he died in a car crash in 1964.
Today, Sir Ian spends a lot of his time in schools speaking talking about his experiences and explaining to teenagers what it was like to grow up when homosexuality was illegal.
He said: “They give me the time of day because they’re aware that Gandalf’s in town. I tell them, ‘I’m not going to talk about that, to begin with, I’m going to talk about being gay.’
“When I tell them that when I was their age it was illegal for gay men to make love to each other, they simply cannot believe it.”
Another huge talking point of the BBC interview was Ian’s view on heterosexual actors playing homosexual characters.
Over the last few years, the topic of authentic casting has been an ongoing conversation with the likes of Eddie Redmayne facing backlash for playing a transgender character in 2015 film, The Danish Girl.
However, Ian was quick to defend stars like Redmayne.
He said: “Is the argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part, and if so does that mean I can’t play straight parts and I’m not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in Macbeth?
“Surely not. We’re acting. We’re pretending. Now, are we capable of understanding what it is to be Jewish? Are we going to convince a Jewish audience that we’re Jewish? Perhaps we don’t need to because we are just acting.”
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