Ben Whishaw Says Being Gay in Early 2000s Was Viewed as 'Disability' Actors 'Shouldn’t Make a Big Thing About'

"I remember days when I wasn’t out and that was a more stressful and unhappy position,” the actor confessed

Ben Whishaw is opening up about being a working actor before he came out.

In a new interview with The Sunday Times published on Friday, Sept. 6, the Skyfall actor revealed that he held off from publicly coming out at the start of his career in the early 2000s. Whishaw, 43, did not come out until his mid-twenties.

“I think it’s down to every single person to do what’s right for them,” he explained. “For me, it’s better to be out.”

“I’m definitely happier. I remember days when I wasn’t out and that was a more stressful and unhappy position,” the Paddington actor said. “So I’m grateful that’s over and also grateful that we live in a world where it’s not a shameful thing.”

Related: Ben Whishaw Dedicates Golden Globes Win to a 'True Queer Hero and Icon'

“When I started in the early 2000s, if you had said to another actor you were gay, it was implied or sometimes said explicitly that that was something you shouldn’t make a big thing about,” he revealed. “It was a disability, almost.”

“There weren’t a vast number [of out actors], and nobody my age. But gay people of my generation came in at a strange time post-AIDS, which had a whole knock-on effect,” he recalled. “Yet it was one secret I didn’t need to keep.”

“It doesn’t need to be anyone’s business, but being happy in oneself, not ashamed, is probably better,” he noted.

Two years ago, Whishaw revealed to The Guardian that his sexuality weighed on him and “was really unresolved for [him].”

At the time, he explained how growing up, there was a thought that “there’s something wrong with you because you’re attracted to a certain thing.” Revealing, “That takes a lot of time and understanding to get over. And understanding doesn’t just arrive because you’ve been explicit and open to other people.”

“The equating of homosexuality with weakness – it’s taken a long time for me to understand there’s no reason why it should be anything of the sort,” he said in the 2022 interview before noting, “Honestly? I feel like I’m only starting to conquer that now.”

Related: Ben Whishaw Admits the Reveal That His James Bond Character Is Gay Felt 'Unsatisfying'

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A few years after he came out, he reflected on the experience with The Sunday Timesin an August 2014 interview, explaining that his “experiences were not dramatic,” adding, "and everyone was surprisingly lovely. I hadn’t anticipated that they would be, but they were."

“I had a lot of fear in doing it for a long time. And who can say why? I’m not sure I know. But it takes courage and people have to do it in their own time,” he said.

“It’s massively weighted with all sorts of stuff, whatever the wider world is saying... it’s an intimate and private and difficult conversation for most people."

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