Ben Whishaw says keeping his sexuality a secret made matters worse

'People assume you’ve got some really juicy awful thing that you’re keeping from them,' the Bond actor says

The Bedfordshire-born actor was forced to speak openly about his sexuality after the press started probing into his private life and his civil partnership with Australian composer Bradshaw was exposed in 2013 (Getty)

Ben Whishaw has said that keeping his sexuality private during the early days of his career made matters “worse”.

The 35-year-old actor, who plays Q in James Bond, said he chose not to discuss his personal life during the beginning of his acting career.

“And that just made it worse,” he says in an interview with The Guardian. “Because then people assume you’ve got some really juicy, awful thing that you’re keeping from them.”

The Bedfordshire-born actor was forced to speak openly about his sexuality after the press started probing into his private life and his civil partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw was exposed in 2013, a year after the two entered into the partnership.

Whishaw says it's something of a relief to be forthright about his personal life. “Because now people aren’t that interested, because now there’s nothing being concealed".

But Whishaw, who played Danny in BBC Two series London Spy last year, says he tries to avoid thinking about how others perceive his sexual orientation. “If you don’t let it be a weight upon you, it won’t manifest as one in your life,” he reflects. “I just try to give it little space in my brain. It’s not interesting to me”.

Whishaw has also starred in films Cloud Atlas, Perfume and The Lobster and on stage in Hamlet.

In an interview with The Independent in October of last year, he reflected on being outed by the press.

"How do you make that statement to the world?” he asked. “It’s hard. Anyway, it all happened as it happened and now everybody knows and it’s not an issue really,” he went on to say.