And some of us are pop culture phenomenons cum gay rights activists blessed with the kind of canyon-deep voice that could out-God Morgan Freeman.

Takei is being modest when describing To Be Takei, which will feature at the Queer Screen Film Festival this September. Among the mundanities of married life, Kroot's film also shows the extraordinary: a California boy whose family was interned along with other Japanese-Americans during World War II who would go on to become a pioneer for Asian actors and, when he came out of the closet in 2005 in Frontiers magazine, for marriage equality.

Kroot provides snippets of Takei's film roles - though not of Australian film, Blood Oath, which he starred in with Bryan Brown and a young Russell Crowe he recalls as "eager, enthusiastic, a little bit of a ... sycophant" - and life on the convention circuit. But it's Takei's personal journey that centres the film, from his first experience with a boy (a nighttime liaison with a camp counsellor that was "delicious") to the intense "feeling of freedom" he felt upon coming out.

Sixty-something years was a long time to wait. "I started my career in the 1950s when it was unthinkable to be out and realistically think you're going to have a viable career," says Takei. "Films and film workers live or die by the box office, and for me to be out and insisting that I was going to be an actor was suicidal." He describes those who suggest that it might have been more pioneering to come out earlier - the kind of commentary that flowed in the wake of Ian Thorpe's recent coming out, which he followed - as "arrogant and all-knowing". "That's a very personal decision you have to make."

Closeted life, especially for a star, came at a cost, says Takei: "You are always on guard; every relationship you have, you are fearful". Gay bars offered a reprieve - "You think, at last, I can let my guard down" - but fear of raids and being publicly marched out to a police paddy wagon was "terrorising". "I'm an actor. People recognise you. Every time you went to a gay bar you looked for the exit signs and hung out near them; if there was any sign of the place being raided, you fled."