Ben Wishaw has always been incredibly secretive about his love life - refusing to answer personal questions for several years.
"For me, it's important to keep a level of anonymity," he told The Telegraph in 2012 after rising to fame playing Q in James Bond epic Skyfall.
"As an actor, your job is to persuade people that you're someone else. So if you're constantly telling people about yourself, I think you're shooting yourself in the foot."
Ben, who is playing junior doctor Adam Kay in tonight's new BBC adaptation of his NHS memoir This Is Going To Hurt, has previously admitted he has no understanding of "why we turn actors into celebrities".
Then in August 2013, Ben announced that the year before he had entered into a civil partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw.
The couple met on the set of Bright Star in 2009 when Ben was playing the role of English poet John Keats and they decided to keep their relationship private at first.
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A year after they entered into a civil partnership, they released a statement explaining they had committed themselves to one another.
"Ben has never hidden his sexuality, but like many actors he prefers not to discuss his family or life outside of his work," his spokesman said.
"Due to speculation, I can confirm that Ben and Mark entered into a civil partnership in August 2012. They were proud to do so and are very happy."
In August 2004, Ben spoke about the 'courage' it takes to come out as gay after playing a man struggling to come to terms with the death of his boyfriend and having to reveal their relationship to his mother in indie film Lilting.
Asked about coming out to his own parents, he told The Sunday Times Magazine: "I did have to. It’s a phrase I’m not entirely comfortable with, but since it’s the only one we have…"
"My experiences were not dramatic. No walking around the block," he said, referring to a similar scene in the film. "And everyone was surprisingly lovely. I hadn’t anticipated that they would be, but they were.
"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."
Ben has explained he didn’t feel comfortable coming out as gay to his family and friends until he was about 26.
"I remember sexuality weighing on me [before then]. That was really unresolved for me," he told The Guardian in January this year.
The Paddington Bear voice actor is most famous for playing Q in three of the James Bond films - Skyfall, Spectre and last year's blockbuster hit No Time To Die.
Before Daniel Craig's final outing was made, there were reports Ben had been pushing for the inclusion of a "substantial character who happens to be gay".
While not suggesting Bond should explore homosexuality himself, Wishaw wanted the films to include a character who is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
In the finished film, viewers saw Q getting ready for a date with a man but we never saw him on screen and the storyline didn't go anywhere.
"I suppose I don't feel it was forced upon the studio. That was not my impression of how this came about. I think it came from a good place," Ben told The Guardian.
"And I think I remember feeling something like what you've just described. I think I thought, 'Are we doing this, and then doing nothing with it?'"
He added: "I remember, perhaps, feeling that was unsatisfying."
Now Ben is starring in the adaptation of Adam Kay's massively successful book, This Is Going to Hurt, playing a gay doctor.
During filming for the new show, which is set in London in 2006, Ben explained that he had to remind himself that public displays of affection between same-sex couples were not commonplace.
"But I definitely remember feeling, for me at least, that it was much less easy to be tactile with a gay partner then," he said.
"It’s still amazing to me that a display of affection between two men could be so distressing that someone would throw things, or tell me to ‘find a f***ing room’."
Speaking in 2020 after he was cast in the new seven-part BBC series, Ben said he was "proud" to portray Adam's experiences of working as a hospital medic.
"It's an honest, hilarious, heart-breaking look at the great institution and the army of unsung heroes who work there under the most stressful conditions," he said.
Published in 2017, Adam's bestseller became a global phenomenon and has been translated into 20 languages.
It shone a light on the horrifically long hours and life-saving decisions medics must make while being sleep deprived, but is also an incredibly funny read.
Writer Adam, who quit his role as a doctor in 2010, has adapted and produced this series.
Adam himself said: "Ben is quite simply one of the finest actors our country has produced and a national treasure. There’s simply no one who could do a better job of playing – a much more handsome version of – me."
During the series, Ben was helped by three amazing doctors who acted as consultants and would come down to the set every day from a shift.
The actor practised on prosthetic body parts and the doctor would tell him where to put his hands and how to move.
"Well, I thought I was quite good," Ben told the BBC. "And the doctors said that I wasn't bad either. But obviously it's a big difference to transfer from a prosthetic body to a real one. Not a lot in common really between the two."
The actor found the book "incredibly funny" and "absolutely devastating" and is in awe of how doctors cope in such a high pressure setting.
Ben, who met Adam just twice before filming started due to Covid, added: "I felt and I actually still feel incredibly shy around Adam.
"On the one hand, he's someone I don't know that well, but then I've done this very kind of intimate portrayal of him and his life, so it still feels quite strange to me."
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