Breaking: Sir Ian McKellen takes savage aim at the Royal Family including ‘not bright’ Prince Harry and ‘deeply unhappy’ King Charles… but saves his sharpest barb for the Queen… See More

“I’m definitely on Prince Harry’s side,’ Sir Ian McKellen said this week.

It’s not the type of comment that might be expected from the legendary actor, who controversially accepted and was awarded a knighthood by the late Queen Elizabeth II in 1991.

But his vehement opinions on the royals don’t end there – and after his fall from a London stage just weeks ago, Sir Ian has certainly had time on his hands to consider things while he recuperated at his London home.

In an interview with Michael Odell of the Times, he branded Harry as ‘not bright enough’ to cope with royal life, the late queen as ‘rude’ and ‘quite mad’ in her final years, and King Charles as ‘damaged’.

Since Prince Harry moved to the US with his wife Meghan Markle, where they live in Montecito with their two children Archie and Lilibet, Sir Ian, 85, appears to have reflected on life in the public eye.

But while he still has some semblance of privacy, at home at least, he compared life in the Royal Family to being in a prison.

The Duke of Sussex is ‘probably not bright enough’ to help himself and to have navigated an entire life as a working royal, Sir Ian claimed.

He added that Prince Philip appeared ‘deeply unhappy’ and Charles III seems ‘clearly damaged’ by his life in the royal family.