Patrick Stewart has responded to being mistakenly labelled “gay” by The Guardian.

The actor was one of many stars to voice support for Ellen Page – with whom he appears in the forthcoming X-Men movie, Days of Future Past – after she came out as gay on Friday (February 14).

A subsequent opinion piece published in The Guardian featured the sentence: “Some gay people, such as Sir Patrick Stewart, think Page’s coming out speech is newsworthy.”

After readers pointed out that Stewart is in fact married to a woman, The Guardian corrected the article, prompting an amusing response from Stewart on Twitter.

He tweeted: “But @guardian I have, like, five or even SEVEN hetero friends and we totally drink beer and eat lots of chicken wings!”

Over the last year or so, Patrick Stewart has built up a large social media following as he and fellow actor Ian McKellen have become known for posing for quirky selfies together, including this impossibly cute Super Bowl selfie.