Death of a kingly actor: Oscar-nominated actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne was circumspect about his sexuality but extravagant with his talent. (film).

In 1995 The Advocate proudly broke the news that Sir Nigel Hawthorne--who died on December 26 at age 72--was the first openly gay Best Actor Oscar nominee, for his star turn in The Madness of King George. While promoting the film, Hawthorne had spoken openly to the magazine about his longtime partner, Trevor Bentham. It was a small matter to Sir Nigel, but all hell broke loose when the British tabloids picked up the story. "The Madness of Queen Nigel," declared The Daily Express. "Yes, Minister, I'm Gay," read the right-wing Daily Mail.

Described by many as an outing, the Advocate piece was in fact simply an accurate record of an open interview, and it was indicative of Hawthorne's modesty that he didn't realize it would be of any interest.

"There are other people, like Simon Callow and Ian McKellen, who seem to use [being gay] as a platform," he told the U.K. newspaper The Observer in 1999. "And I've never wanted to do that. I've always wanted a private life; that's what I was after. And I thought just by living as we did and going everywhere together, it would be assumed, without my ever having to make a public statement about it."

Instead, he and Bentham were besieged by paparazzi' at their Hertfordshire home, and the couple hired four security guards to keep them away from the house. On their way to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, Hawthorne and Bentham checked in inside the parking area at London's Heathrow Airport to avoid the press.

"The headlines were absolutely awful and hurtful, dreadful stuff," Hawthorne was quoted as saying in the Observer article. "We were held up to ridicule. I just thought it was so trashy. We've got over it now, and, in a way, things are better, but I was very angry at the time."

The distinguished British actor, who had been working extensively since the 1960s, might have been caught off-guard by the intense focus brought on by an Academy Award nomination. "I'm not somebody who sets himself up as an icon of sexual orientation," he told Michelle Clarkin in that story in The Advocate. "But my private life has never been a secret. I've never been a closet queen."

Hawthorne was born in 1929 in Coventry, England, but two years later his family emigrated to Cape Town, South Africa, where he grew up. Having dropped out of Cape Town University, he made his stage debut in 1950 in The Shop at Sly Corner, returning to the United Kingdom in 1951 to try acting there. His career didn't take off, however, and he returned to South Africa in 1957.

Having regained his confidence, Hawthorne was back in London in 1963 and made his West End debut in 1966. In 1968 he met Bentham, a stage manager at London's famous Royal Court Theatre who later became a writer; the two set up home together in 1979.

During that period Hawthorne's career gathered momentum, and he acted in film and TV projects throughout the '70s, but it was in the '80s that he achieved fame as the manipulative civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC sitcom Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister, winning four British Academy of Film and Television Awards for his work on the shows.

At the same time, his stage reputation grew, and he won a Tony in 1991 for his performance as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands--a role that went to Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation--and numerous other awards as King George III in the stage production of The Madness of George III, which the writer, Alan Bennett, agreed to approve as a movie only if Hawthorne played the king. It was a crowning achievement, and many view Tom Hanks's Oscar victory for Forrest Gump over Hawthorne as a travesty.

Ironically, despite the unpleasantness of the "outing" experience, Hawthorne subsequently played a key gay role in The Object of My Affection, the 1998 drama from King George director Nicholas Hytner that starred Paul Rudd as a gay man and Jennifer Aniston as his best friend. In truth, Hawthorne, who was awarded a knighthood in 1999, was one of those rare, gifted actors who transcended himself and became the parts he played. As Hytner said of Hawthorne and his gay King George costar Rupert Everett: "Their own sexuality has nothing to do with it. Their access to the sexuality of the characters they're playing has everything to do with it."

For past coverage of Hawthorne, including his coming-out story in The Advocate, go to www.advocate.com

Goodridge is U.S. editor of Screen International.