Derek Jacobi

Sir Derek Jacobi is one of the great British stage and screen actors, celebrated for his Hamlet across multiple productions, his BAFTA-winning I, Claudius (1976), roles in Gladiator (2000) and The King's Speech (2010), and the long-running series Cadfael (1994). He has been in a relationship with actor and director Richard Clifford since the late 1970s — one of the longest and most stable partnerships in British public life — entering a civil partnership in 2006 and marrying on his 80th birthday in 2018. Jacobi came out to his mother at 21 and has lived openly within the industry for decades without a formal press announcement. He is also known for co-starring with his longtime friend Ian McKellen in the sitcom Vicious (2013), which featured them as a long-partnered gay couple with a dynamic that lovingly mirrored their own decades-long real friendship. In 2015, Jacobi and McKellen served as Grand Marshals of the New York City Pride March.