During a recent appearance on CNN, out
British actor Ian McKellen described Vice President Mike Pence as a
“disturbed” man who should not be “in any control of
situations.”
Speaking with CNN's Christiane
Amanpour, McKellen rhetorically asked whether he was really brave to
come out in 1988.
“I was 49,” the 79-year-old
McKellen said. “What's brave about coming out at 49?”
“The expectation was that you would
lose your job or the respect of others, including friends, family, if
you came out. None of that happened to me. My film career took off
when I came out,” he added.
When asked whether he worried that
marriage equality in the United States would be undone if President
Donald Trump's pick to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh is
confirmed, McKellen responded that he was more concerned with Pence's
views on LGBT rights.
“I'm much more frightened of the
words and beliefs of your vice president with regard to people like
me,” McKellen
answered. “I gather he thinks I should go somewhere and be
cured. I believe he can't trust himself to be in a room with a woman
on his own. That's a disturbed person who should not be in any
control of situations.”
(Related: Trump
once joked that Mike Pence “wants to hang” all gay people.)
“I think perhaps judges are a little
bit more tempered than that. Are they? I don't know. But yes, it
is, of course, worrying. But then that's just the system you have,”
he added.
McKellen appears in a production of
Shakespeare's King Lear in London.