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Sir Ian McKellen has explained why he accepted a knighthood after considering turning down the offer.
The Lord of the Rings actor was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 for services to the performing arts and, in 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to drama and to equality.
However, McKellen, who said that he found the former monarch “quite rude” on “the few occasions” he met her, claimed he would have turned down becoming a “sir” if he was “a man of adamant principle”.
McKellen said in a new interview with The Times: “Of course, If I’d been a man of adamant principle, I would have turned down the knighthood. After all, many have done: Paul Scofield, Albert Finney, David Hockney, Harold Pinter – I’d have been in very good company. But my heroes – Sir Laurence [Olivier], Sir John [Gielgud], Sir Ralph [Richardson], Sir Alec [Guinness], Sir Tyrone [Guthrie] – had fallen for it.”
Over the years, many stars, including David Bowie, Alan Bennett and Ken Loach, have turned down offers of a knighthood, with Loach stating: “It’s all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.”
McKellen suggested he considered rejecting the knighthood, but revealed what “the clincher” was in his decision to accept it: advice given by his friend, the actor and Stonewall co-founder Michael Cashman.
“He said, ‘Oh, Ian, it’ll be so useful.’ And he was right, because being a knight opens doors. I mean, look at Sir Keir Starmer. A big part of his success was that the BBC had to keep calling him ‘Sir Keir’. It made him sound terribly respectable. Poor old Boris Johnson doesn’t even have an MBE.”
However, he acknowledged that he received a backlash after accepting the honour, with a friend warning him days after: “You are about to discover your best friends are your worst enemies.”
McKellen said that when he received a medal for acting in 2008, the Queen said to him: “You’ve been doing this for an awfully long time,” to which he responded: “Well, not as long as you.”
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He added: “I got a royal smile for that, but then she said, ‘Does anyone still actually go to the theatre?’”
McKellen can currently be seen in new film The Critic, which is in cinemas now.
