14 Celebrities Who Refused to Be Knighted
If you’re not from jolly ol’ England, you may need a little explainer. There are different levels of honors, which are fun to read in a Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure voice:
- MBE: Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
- OBE: Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
- CBE: Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
But “Knight” or “Dame” trumps them all.
John Cleese
He was twice offered one of their symbolic nobility titles, but turned it down once calling it “silly,” and another time saying returning to England in the winter was “too much of a price to pay.”
Alan Rickman
He declined a CBE while he was alive, but for some reason a bunch of weirdos petitioned to get him a posthumous knighthood.
Alfred Hitchcock
He refused a CBE in 1962, believing he hadn’t yet contributed enough to British culture to merit the award. By 1980, he’d changed his tune, and he accepted a knighthood very shortly before his death.
Stephen Hawking
He’d already been given the lower title of CBE, but in the ‘90s he refused a knighthood in protest of budget cuts to the sciences. A spokesman said, “Prof Hawking does not like titles. In fact he dislikes the whole concept of them.”
John Lennon
He accepted an MBE in 1965, along with the rest of The Beatles, but later returned the award, saying, “Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts. With Love, John Lennon of Bag.”
George Harrison
Shortly after Paul McCartney was offered a knighthood, Harrison turned down the lesser title of OBE.
Paul Weller
The singer-songwriter declined via his agent: “Paul was surprised and flattered, but it wasn’t really for him.”
Malcolm McDowell
It sounds like he found the honor of knighthood too stuffy, comparing it to “wearing a suit every day of your life.”
Alan Cumming
The actor was given an OBE in 2009 for his work as an LGBTQ+ activist, but by 2023 he returned it, saying he had “misgivings” with the “toxicity” of the whole monarch and empire thing.
Roald Dahl
No one knows why, but it became public knowledge after a FOIA request that Dahl turned down the honor.
Rudyard Kipling
He turned down two Orders of Merit and two knighthoods in the 19th and 20th centuries. His wife explained that he thought he could “do his work better without it.”
David Bowie
He said Mick Jagger’s choice to accept a knighthood was his to make, but as for Bowie himself, “I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”
John Lydon
We’ll never know why the Queen offered a Sex Pistol an MBE, since “God Save the Queen” wasn’t exactly a rousing pro-monarchy anthem. Predictably, he declined.
Benjamin Zephaniah
In retrospect, it was a terrible idea to offer an honor with the word “empire” to an anti-colonial poet and activist: “Me? I thought, ‘OBE, me? Up yours,’ I thought. I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.”