edition of hardtalk. i am stephen sackur and today i am joined by an audience here at the bbc radio theatre to celebrate 20 years of hardtalk interviews. who better to have on our birthday than sir ian mckellen? whether you think of him as richard iii or gandalf, he has won hearts and accolades around the world. not just for decades of work on screen but his passion of public campaigning, particularly on the issue of gay rights. please give a warm welcome to ian mckellen. cheering and applause. that was quite a welcome. ian mckellen, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. there's a lot to talk about both personal and in terms of yourcampaigning. but there are very few actors with the diversity you have offered your audiences, from the great shakespearean roles to comic book characters in x—men. is there a common thread through everything you have done? the common thread is there is no common thread. there is a variety. what i always admired in my youth was people playing different sorts of parts in different environments. i was proud of having played widow twankey, which is a drag role in a british christmas entertainment, or pantomime. i was as proud of that as i was playing king lear. you did a show exploring your own recent ancestry. with your mother, and she died when you were very young, just 12, you said you thought she would not mind if you were an actor because she thought that actors gave so much entertainment to people. a very early memory is being bathed by my mother. only once a week, actually! it was the war. as she was bathing me, she would tell me the story of the radio programme she had heard the night before after i had gone to bed. as a family, we went out more to the theatre than the cinema. i went with them at an early age and was intrigued and excited to think that it was possible for me to discover how it was done. it being all that scenery, how you learned your lines, what happened behind the door on the stage. backstage is still the most thrilling place. as we came out to meet the audience, that journey backstage, you said you were getting nervous. i was getting excited. what about your sexuality and choices? in your younger years, being gay could be a criminal offence. as it remains in many countries around the world, yes. was it the space where you could find a way to feel much more yourself, to express your identity in the way you could not outside the theatre? that is exactly the point. it was illegal for me to declare my love or do anything about it. in the theatre, or at least standing on the stage, i could disguise it and, speaking someone else‘s words, have an emotional freedom i was not allowed in my own life. many professional actors are gay for the same reasons that i took up thejob. because i want to explore this campaigning you have chosen to do on the gay rights issue, i think it is important to ask you why, even after homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, it took you 22 years to come out publicly. i am not proud of it. then you hear me going on and on and my friends say, when you hear me going on and on and my friends say, will you stop talking about being gay? i do it because for so many years i felt i could not. i am doing it on behalf of other kids like me, growing up in a similar situation, perhaps because of the attitudes of their family or socially where they live. i do it on their behalf. so why did it take so long? i was not the only one who took so long. i was the second person ever to be knighted who was openly gay. the first was angus wilson, the novelist. there were great restrictions, even after the law was gradually changing. gay people were meant to stay in their place and that place probably was what we call the closet. which was not announcing yourself and drawing attention to yourself. it did mean you were still... as your acting career really took off through the 1970s and 1980s and you are getting more and more important roles and beginning to make that transition from stage to acting on screen, you were bottling a lot of things up. i was. iwonder, looking back, whether you feel you would have been a better actor younger if you had been more public about your identity. i think...probably. it is certainly true of me and practically every person i know in this industry who declared their sexuality that life becomes better in every possible way once you're honest. and that affects your work. and my work, which is dealing with honesty and truth about human nature, was likely to be more convincing. that is what friends and colleagues said. overnight, my acting took on a depth that had not happened before because i am no longer disguising. i am now revealing. it is interesting that you say that. because when one looks at your transition from being one of the greats in the theatre to also becoming an extraordinarily successful on—screen actor, in some ways, it came quite late in your career. it came after i came out. after i said i was gay, suddenly this film work came my way! butjust in terms of technique as much as anything, and how you express yourself, you have talked about the way in which, earlier in your career, you have actually felt, looking back, that you were not an actor who was appropriate for the movies. why? if you're playing in a large theatre, 2000 people, you have a responsibility, i think, to make sure that they can all hear and see you and understand what you're up to. that can involve, if you're going to reach an audience, way up there, probably a few hand gestures and open expression. down there, where the critics normally sit, it does not seem very convincing. it is a problem. how do you act in a large theatre? i elected to make it big rather than cut those people out. that is where i used to sit and where the students, those who do not have much money, would sit. that is where my friends are. but it changed for me when i did a production of macbeth, still available on video... laughter. withjudi dench, the greatest there will ever be. in a tiny theatre. the comment on acting the part was it was inappropriate. you had to be, you had to exist. it meant conversation rather than declaration and rhetoric. once i had done that, i never really wanted to work in a big theatre again. i then started to work in the smallest theatre of all, which is cinema, where the camera can be closer to you than anybody. there have been critics... perhaps one of the most famous was fellow actor richard harris. he lumped you and derekjacobi together. and kenneth branagh. i was in good company. he said, these guys are technically brilliant but passionless. yes. nonsense. when he died, he played dumbledore, the wiza rd. i played the real wizard! you're in a different franchise, shall we say! but when they called me up and said, would i be interested in being in the harry potterfilms, they did not say what part. i worked out what they were thinking and i couldn't. i could not take over the part from an actor who i knew did not approve of me. interesting. you could have been dumbledore? sometimes, when i see the posters of michael gambon, who plays dumbledore, i think, sometime, it's me! we get asked for each other‘s autograph. we have to get to the wizards. gandalf became you, you became gandalf. it was an extraordinary bonding of character and actor. you chose, not so long ago, that when you finally leave this mortal coil, your gravestone will simply say, played gandalf, came out. here lies gandalf. yes, that would do, wouldn't it? it is the two sides of my life which have meant a great deal to me. being as famous as the actor playing gandalf was bound to be, looking back on it, and i don't begrudge it at all, but i am now in contact with all sorts of people, particularly very young people all over the world who i could not possibly have known about. they have let me into their lives, to an extent. i visit schools quite a lot to talk about gay issues but i am welcome because it is gandalf. and they give me the time of day, which they probably would not if some old geezer strolled into the classroom. it is a very, very personal, wonderful thing. which i don't feel about other parts. you do not feel that diminishes some of the other, some might say, more profound parts and plays and films? no. because it is true. the text ofjrr tolkien's dialogue is not up to shakespeare. nor is it trying to be. it is a different sort of storytelling. but to be part of the culture, which is what gandalf has always been... gandalf for president was an early badge before the films were made. to be able to impersonate this character already in the zeitgeist, it meant a great deal as an example of how to behave in the world. and how young people respond to him, what a privilege. you have done a lot of tosh, as well. i wondered how long it would be! before we got on to "hard talk". well, x—men... x—men is not tosh. is there a role you have ever turned down for being too puerile or silly? about once a week. no, no, i have said it many times. x—men is a discussion in a very popular form of what the civil rights movement does. it is not true of superman and those guys, those who so suddenly become super men by changing their underwear, it seems to me. what other tosh? i'm thinking, i probably have done some! maybe i am picking away at the wrong thing, but it seems to me there is an insecurity in acting. it is a thing that it is a very insecure profession. your great—great uncle died in the workhouse. i wonder whether that insecurity, even today, is still a part of your make—up. well, i am extremely lucky as an actor from that point of view. i have never been out of work. i have taken work that other actors of my standing and generation might not have done because there was not much money involved or you were going away from home. but whether you're working on not working, to feel part of a group, a tribe of people who know that if a play is working well, the relationship between audience and and performers... and the writer, he might be long dead, provides something magical. stories are what we as human beings are good at doing. we cannot manage without stories. when it happens in the theatre and works well, even if you are going to be able to work for the rest of the year, you are blessed. and you're doing it in the company of people who share that excitement. it is a fantasticjob. there is an irony. we have touched on it already. after you came out, your career took off. particularly in the movies. but there has never been an openly gay winner of best actor at the oscars. no. the university of southern california did an analysis of the top 100 movies in 2015. the latest. and they found that 82 of those top 100 movies do not depict a single lgbt speaking or named character. yes. we had that hashtag "oscars so white". do we need a hash tag "oscars so straight"? you should not look to hollywood for social advance. laughter i do not mean to be flippant, but you looked to hollywood forfinancial advice. does that mean you have to hold your nose? no, you don't have to. you just don't go to hollywood. you do your work somewhere else. the movies that we all love and relish are fantasy. that is why we love them. it is not the real world. there are plenty of wonderful films being made about the real world but they do not come out of what we think of as traditionally the hollywood machine. geena davis, for example, and a bunch of women actors and directors are really trying to change the way that women are depicted on the big screen. particularly in hollywood. we now get onto the campaigning work you do. is part of your campaigning work to try and change the way that film as a business works? no. my campaigning is all about allowing people to be themselves, whatever label they put on themselves. can we really grumble when, finally, it was agreed that moonlight should be the oscar film of the year, without a strong gay storyline? that comes out of gay people, and in that case, black people, wanting to tell a story to which a person responded. that people should be given the freedom to do that. but the campaign to say, right, we must employ more openly gay actors... i don't think that will get you very far. talking about going very far, you have become very active internationally with your gay rights campaigning. i know that you have been in russia recently. i also know that you're about to go to turkey. both of these places strike me as places where you will not be welcome and where you could be in some danger. it did feel like that in russia. it was in the city of tchaikovsky, one of the greatest gay men to ever come out of russia, and their politicians are homophobic. it means they have a fear or distrust of gay people. as a visitor, trying to be myself, i have to be protected. with bodyguards? oh, yes. what difference do you feel you can make as an outsider, albeit a celebrated famous one, coming into different countries with their own bodies and culture and lecturing them about the way they should organise their society and culture? how can that make a difference? i do feel myself to be english probably first, then british, then european and then internationalist. when you come out, you join a tribe that is all over the world. and i feel i know what it is like to be oppressed in russia because i remember what it used to be like here. i do have a story to tell which is relevant. and the people, really, that i contact when i go abroad, if i am allowed, other local people who are trying, in their own way, to make their own lives easier... the lgbt people of russia, of whom there are millions. but very few are brave enough to express their individuality and be honest. and i just know that they are very grateful when you arrive and you say, it'll probably be all right. keep at it, keep fighting. that is all i am really doing. occasionally, you can point out the facts that have got lost. in india, and kenya, they have laws which the british empire put in place. anti—gay laws. when we withdrew, we left these bad laws behind. now these local laws are being defended by the indians and kenyans and they say, don't come to us with your foreign idea. i want to say, no, i want to take this away which we should have taken away when we left your country. we're almost out of time. i want to bring it back from the public ian mckellen to the private and deeply personal ian mckellen. it seems to me that you have always guarded your own private life. i know that at one point, you decided to write an autobiography. you took the money, the advance. i didn't. it was offered. you handed it back and never actually got it. the point is, you had second thoughts. why? i don't think there is anything remarkable about my private life, from what i can observe. there is a clear distinction between saying, i am what i am, and saying, this is what i do. i do not want to start talking about my relationships. that is not fair, unless the other person is with me talking about it as well. but the idea of an autobiography is very misleading. you get one side of the story. but on the principle, on the issue, i can be bold. and knowing that i am in the right, standing on the moral high ground, that is easier. to be nosy, i will dig a bit more into the personal. you live in a country where things have changed an awful lot in your lifetime. frankly, if you were in your 20s or 30s now, you could, in a way that you could not have back then, you could have considered, you know, first of all, gay marriage. you could easily have had children, lots of children, whatever. you have talked about being the last of the mckellens. and there's a sense of melancholy in being the last of your line. do you think, if you had your life over, you would have liked all of that? the kids? i used to think the best thing about being gay was that you do not have to have kids. i mean, how many decent parents are there? the misery of the world comes because people had a dreadful upbringing. it seems to me. so i feel like i escaped that. also, i am extremely selfish. i can devote all my time to my career and do things around it without rushing back to change the nappies or going on holiday with all the kids are all that. oh, how ghastly it sounds! but the thrill of my life and the possibility of change in the future is to see kids in school, and i am talking about teenagers, who say, do not come here and talk about being gay. you are only talking about being gay because, for years, people have pointed at you and said you're queer. you give yourself a more sympathetic label. we do not want labels. we do not know if we are gay or not. we might be straight one day, gay the next, and i think, that is the future. we are out of time. thank you for talking to us, sir ian mckellen. hello there. after a fairly mixed weekend weatherwise, our rather unsettled spell of august weather is set to continue this week. this is how we ended sunday. some clear skies there in cambridgeshire, captured by one of our weather watchers, but we have still got low pressure in charge of things. sat to the north—west of the uk, here is a trailing weather front, which will bring rain to some central parts of the country, down towards the south—west, during the course of the day. for scotland and for northern ireland this morning, there will be some sunshine to start your day. quite a fresh morning, actually, here. one or two showers pushing in from the north—west, and the odd shower for the north of england as well. heading down from lincolnshire, towards the midlands, towards south—west england, you are under the influence of a weather front from the word go, so fairly cloudy and damp. some sunshine to start off your day across the south—east of england, and east anglia, as well. and for the likes of kent and sussex, it should remain pretty warm and bright, really, for much of the day. a little bit further north, we've got that weather front bringing a few showers to east anglia and london, and some spells of rain across the south—west of england, and south wales, too. now, temperatures today about 18 to 21 degrees. sunshine and showers for scotland, and for northern ireland, too. if you're lucky enough to be heading to the athletics world championship today, we'll see the cloud building through the course of the afternoon. could bring an isolated shower later on. now, through the course of monday evening, and overnight into tuesday, this weather front from the south now start to pivot and return a little bit further north. so that is going to bring rain into central wales and through the midlands to start your tuesday morning. to the north of that, clearer skies, with a few showers around too, but low pressure is going to dominate. we have got this area of low pressure around the near continent. that is going to push its way northwards, up towards the north sea, in fact, over the next couple of days. we could well import some pretty heavy showers across the south—east corner later on in the day. still some sunshine here. to the north of that, we've got that front bringing rain for parts of the midlands, northern england, in towards wales and the south—west. scotland and northern ireland having another day of sunny spells and a few scattered showers. now, an improvement from the north—west, i think, during wednesday, but for central and eastern parts of england we're still likely to see some heavy, potentially thundery showers, and it will feel rather cool for the time of year. 16 to 19 degrees. during thursday, again, relatively cool, but actually probably be the dryer day, and the brightest day of the week, before we see a return to some rain, particularly in the north and west, during the course of friday. so for the week ahead, all in all, things are looking pretty unsettled. showers or rain at times. rather cool and breezy, but some sunshine in between the showers. bye bye. i'm mariko oi in singapore. the headlines: china urges north korea to stop its nuclear missile tests hours after the un votes for new sanctions. myanmar accuses the un of exaggeration and rejects claims of human rights abuses against rohingya muslims. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: a dramatic rise in caesarean section births around the globe. we report from turkey on why so many are being performed. and a warning that too much time on—line is as bad for children asjunk food. how worried should parents be?