Ben Whishaw has said that he was scared of coming out for a long time.

The star – who appeared as Q in James Bond film Skyfall – is famously guarded about his personal life, only confirming his sexuality publicly last year when he revealed he had privately entered into a civil partnership Australian composer Mark Bradshaw in 2012.

He has opened up about his experiences of coming out today, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

The Cloud Atlas star said: “I had a lot of fear in doing it for a long time. And who can say why? I’m not sure I know.

“Everyone was surprisingly lovely. I hadn’t anticipated that they would be, but they were.

He said: “It takes courage [to come out] and people have to do it in their own time.

“It’s hard to have a conversation with people you’ve known your whole life about a very intimate thing.

“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.

“There is so much tension around doing something like that. I applaud everyone who does it.”

Despite opening up about coming out, Whishaw still refused to discuss his relationship with Bradshaw in the interview.

However, he said of having children: “I don’t have a feeling about it at the moment. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not ready to think about it now as my life is too peripatetic”

Whishaw signed on to the lead role in a planned Freddie Mercury biopic last year, after Sacha Baron Cohen pulled out of the project.

Queen guitarist Brian May had claimed that Baron Cohen was replaced because he would have been “distracting” in the lead role, but reports suggested he had clashed with producers over the film’s tone.

The movie, which is backed by Queen, is set to focus on the period leading up to Live Aid in 1985 and Freddie’s famous performance, and is expected to not focus on the AIDS crisis.