The actor Sir Ian McKellen has pulled out of a reported £1m deal to write his memoirs because his “heart was not in them”.
McKellen, whose career has included film roles as Richard III and as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies , said he endured “months of agonising” before informing the publishing house Hodder & Stoughton of his decision.
“I have thought long and hard about these memoirs over nine months, but in the end decided my heart was not in them,” McKellen said, adding that he “could have retired on the money”.
McKellen, who revealed in 1988 that he was gay, had been expected to write about his private life and role as a campaigner for gay rights and co-founder of the lobby group Stonewall, as well as a career that spans more than half a century. He has said he regrets not coming out sooner.
This weekend Hodder & Stoughton confirmed: “Sadly, it [the book] is not now happening.”
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While there will be no autobiography, McKellen, 76, is to take part in a new series of Who Do You Think You Are?, the BBC programme that traces the ancestry of celebrities. “They don’t tell you what they have found in advance but they must have researched something quite interesting otherwise there would not be a programme,” he said.
“All I know is that I have some Northern Irish background from the mid-19th century. I hope it turns out that one or more of my ancestors was an actor or a writer.”
McKellen, who was born and bred in Lancashire before going to Cambridge, worked his way up from repertory theatres to the West End and later Hollywood. He was last seen in the BBC2 drama, The Dresser .
McKellen, who will read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid on Radio 4’s Book of the Week from tomorrow, is not the first showbusiness star to abandon plans for an autobiography.
In the 1980s, Sir Mick Jagger agreed a deal with publishers Weidenfeld & Nicolson only to withdraw several years later. Sir Sean Connery twice changed his mind about writing his memoirs. US singer Billy Joel also pulled out of a deal for an autobiography.