Ian McKellan has spoken out about the controversy surrounding this year's Academy Awards, which has nominated white actors and actresses in its Best Actor and Best Actress categories for the second year in a row.
However, rather than talk about racism, the veteran British actor talked about homophobia, which he thinks is as much of an issue as racism among Academy voters.
"No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar; I wonder if that is prejudice or chance," he said in an interview with The Guardian. He strongly implied, however, that it was more of the former.
As for actors who have been awarded Best Actor for portraying gay men, McKellen remarked that it was "clever."
"What about giving me one for playing a straight man? My speech has been in two jackets ... 'I'm proud to be the first openly gay man to win the Oscar.' I've had to put it back in my pocket twice," he said.
Actors who won Oscars for playing gay men in films include Tom Hanks, Sean Penn and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
McKellan, who is gay and serves as co-founder of rights group Stonewall, went on to say that he sympathizes with African-American actors and actresses who feel discriminated against.
"As a representative of the industry they're in, it's receiving complaints which I fully sympathize with," he said in an interview with Sky News. "It's not only black people who've been disregarded by the film industry, it used to be women, it's certainly gay people to this day. And these are all legitimate complaints, and the Oscars are the focus of those complaints of course."
McKellan has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor twice, first for his role as gay director James Whale in "Gods and Monsters" (1999) and as Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings" (2002), according to People.
