Hollywood actor Ian Mckellen has announced that he has scrapped plans to write a memoir about his life and has returned a £1 advance to UK publisher Hodder & Stoughton.
At the Oxford Literary Festival he elaborated the reasoning behind his decision to abandon the memoir “It was a bit painful. I didn’t want to go back into my life and imagine things that I hadn’t understood so far,” McKellen said. “The privacy of my life I don’t quite understand myself, and it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. So there you go, I’m sorry.”
McKellen, 76, came out of the closet at age 45, and has said he regretted not doing so earlier in life.
“I think I would have been a different person and a happier one,” he said.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.