Dirk Bogarde probed by MI5 over fears he was target of Russian gay entrapment plot, declassified files show
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FILM star Dirk Bogarde was investigated by spies at MI5 as they thought he could be the target of a gay “entrapment” attempt by the Russians, newly-declassified files show. Documents released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, reveal that the actor was "clearly disturbed" after being told that his name was on a list of "six practising British homosexuals" passed to Russians.
![[Portrait of Dirk Bogarde, UK actor.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/a750y7-dirk-bogarde-uk-actor-679522484.jpg?strip=all&w=769)
But after he was interviewed in the south of France, MI5 concluded that he was a "retiring, serious" man who was unlikely to fall victim to any kind of KGB sting operation. Bogarde, who died in 1999, never came out publicly as gay, although he maintained a long-term relationship with his manager, Anthony Forwood.
He appeared in a number of pioneering films with gay themes, most notably Death In Venice, and starred in the 1977 war epic A Bridge Too Far. In 1970, MI5 learned that he had been named as a gay man to the KGB by a man who had himself been compromised by the Russians during a visit to Moscow in the late 1950s.
Around the same time, a KGB defector warned that a young British actor had been the subject of a possible recruitment attempt in the Russian capital again in the late 1950s. The actor was said to have appeared in film with a name like "The kingdom of something" with MI5 thought could be a reference to "Campbell's Kingdom" in which Bogarde had starred.
