Top 100 Mckellen Quotes
#1. I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I'm a philistine. I like the good life too much; I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.
Anthony Hopkins
#2. Some of the greatest actors have turned superheroes into a serious business: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in 'Batman'; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the first venerable knights of the X-Men, who have now passed the baton to Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.
Tom Hiddleston
#3. Directed By: Peter Jackson Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen
Jamerson INC
#4. Look at a guy like Ian McKellen, who is eighty or whatever, and he's just loving his work, and you can see that in the work. That defines what type of actor you are. And what kind of people want to work with you. And whether you can do this job for a long, long time.
Jason Clarke
#5. Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.
Dawn French
#6. I think Ian McKellen made it all happen, because he used to throw dinner parties and invite everyone over.
Shawn Ashmore
#7. I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.
Rebecca Romijn
#8. When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.
Edward Norton
#9. I've been grateful enough, smart enough to take the work with Ian McKellen in Gods And Monsters.
Brendan Fraser
#10. When you get to work with people like Ian McKellen or directors like Peter Jackson, you sit and watch.
Luke Evans
#11. It was just really odd to be in a room with Ian McKellen sharing cucumber sandwiches.
Adam Brown
#12. Ian McKellen is brilliant with research. I paid really close attention to the sources he goes to. He's a very, very intelligent man.
Brendan Fraser
#13. I love the acting community at Cambridge. It's really quite committed and serious, since the days of Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen right through to Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie.
Tom Hiddleston
#14. Judi Dench and Ian McKellen taught me how to work hard and respect the theatre.
Francesca Annis
#15. There are some fantastic parts for older actors.
Ian McKellen
#16. That was the big effect Lord of the Rings had on me. It was discovering New Zealand. And even more precious were the people- not at all like the Australians.
Ian McKellen
#17. Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.
Ian McKellen
#18. I have lots of fans, they are mostly under the age of 12, boys and girls.
Ian McKellen
#19. If I say often enough that I'm going to be in 'King Kong,' I'm hoping that Peter Jackson will take the hint.
Ian McKellen
#20. Success in the movies has pushed me to places I didn't know I was allowed to go.
Ian McKellen
#21. I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, 'Do you need help, brother?' And $1 fell into my hat!
Ian McKellen
#22. Why not celebrate those who want to marry and bring up a family?
Ian McKellen
#23. I have little routines in the theater. Once I've established something, like the order of putting on makeup and a costume, I have to invariably do it in the same order every time, even if I only did it by chance the first time round.
Ian McKellen
#24. All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.
Ian McKellen
#25. In the U.K. there is still work to be done, particularly in schools, stopping the homophobic bullies in the playground and introducing unbiased discussion on gay issues in the classroom.
Ian McKellen
#26. I remember Tom Stoppard saying to me when I came out, 'I feel so sorry for you, because you'll never have children.' These days I would say, 'Well, why not, Tom?'
Ian McKellen
#27. If I have any audience, they can know that anything I am in, I would go see, with the expectation of being really satisfied.
Ian McKellen
#28. Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend ... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.
Ian McKellen
#29. I'm dead against the idea that you should try to "cure" people of being gay.
Ian McKellen
#31. I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.
Ian McKellen
#32. The one thing you can ask, I think, is that actors get paid a living wage. I would like it if all the repertory theatres that currently exist could do that. It would make a huge difference.
Ian McKellen
#33. Bolton School has a great tradition in the liberal arts.
Ian McKellen
#34. What's nice for me, having identified myself for years as being rather shy, is now, wherever I am, in public, there tends to be a friendly face who's pleased to see me, and I like that.
Ian McKellen
#35. In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Ian McKellen
#37. Will I miss Gandalf? Well, I don't miss him, because people are constantly coming up to me mentioning him and talking about him, so I don't feel that I've lost contact.
Ian McKellen
#38. To be allowed for the first time in your later career to play leading parts in extremely popular movies is not a situation to worry about.
Ian McKellen
#39. Until I came out, my acting was all about disguise, and thereafter it became about telling the truth.
Ian McKellen
#40. I increasingly see organized religion as actually my enemy. They treat me as their enemy. Not all Christians, of course. Not all Jews, not all Muslims.
Ian McKellen
#41. Try and understand what part you have to play in the world in which you live. There's more to life than you know and it's all happening out there. Discover what part you can play and then go for it.
Ian McKellen
#43. The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.
Ian McKellen
#44. What I particularly like about Broadway is the camaraderie and the friendship of other people in other shows. Everybody knows you're opening and cares about you. There's a real village atmosphere.
Ian McKellen
#45. I've always felt that 'X-Men' was about something serious. It wasn't just fantasy.
Ian McKellen
#46. In any human-rights campaign, everybody must do what they can.
Ian McKellen
#47. I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.
Ian McKellen
#48. Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone's aware that the camera doesn't.
Ian McKellen
#49. Acting is a very big part of what human beings do. A dog is always a dog, but we're always changing.
Ian McKellen
#50. My reaction to 3D is subtly. Things don't come out at you, but rather you - The audience come into the film.
Ian McKellen
#51. Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.
Ian McKellen
#52. Doing some of the 'Lord Of The Rings' press junkets got a bit claustrophobic.
Ian McKellen
#53. Eventually, before I die, I hope to have written about every part I've played.
Ian McKellen
#54. I don't think many people will re-read 'The Da Vinci Code.'
Ian McKellen
#55. I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.
Ian McKellen
#56. It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.
Ian McKellen
#58. I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.
Ian McKellen
#59. Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.
Ian McKellen
#60. You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues.
Ian McKellen
#61. I got intrigued by working in small theatres.
Ian McKellen
#62. The spirit of the four hobbits in 'Lord of the Rings,' I suppose I miss that.
Ian McKellen
#63. There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud.
Ian McKellen
#64. I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.
Ian McKellen
#65. If I was a star, it would be difficult to go off and do 'Coronation Street.' So I guess I'm not a star.
Ian McKellen
#66. On the day after 9/11, I walking through the smoke and the smells of New York. There were knots of policemen everywhere. As I went past one officer, he called out: "Hi, Magneto." That's an indication of X-Men's extraordinary reach.
Ian McKellen
#67. If you're sounding right, you're probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right - if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, 'do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were really landed on it.'
Ian McKellen
#69. I certainly wouldn't define myself as a northerner. I'm not even really sure what that means. I've lived in London for 50 years. I wasn't born here, but I have spent most of my life here. So I don't make much of it, to be honest. I'm just myself.
Ian McKellen
#70. I don't have Gandalf the White's certainty about everything.
Ian McKellen
#71. The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.
Ian McKellen
#72. Bill Gallagher's new version of 'The Prisoner' is an enthralling commentary on modern culture. It is witty, intelligent and disturbing. I am very excited to be involved.
Ian McKellen
#73. I learned that coming out was crucial to self-esteem.
Ian McKellen
#74. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.
Ian McKellen
#75. Actors don't, in fact, retire, do they? It took me a while to remember that.
Ian McKellen
#76. Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel.
Ian McKellen
#77. It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.
Ian McKellen
#78. I'm not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.
Ian McKellen
#79. Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?
Ian McKellen
#80. For old actors, just remember that inside you're only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you've forgotten how to do what kids know automatically.
Ian McKellen
#81. I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,'
Ian McKellen
#82. Journalists often ask me: "Aren't you sorry that after all the work you've done, you're best known as Magneto and Gandalf?" But that's what I've always wanted - not to be known as myself. I want to draw attention to the characters.
Ian McKellen
#83. Gandalf is in Middle-earth to keep an eye on everybody, and that can be a rather serious matter.
Ian McKellen
#84. If you've been in a film that's seen by millions and millions and millions of people, you're more likely to be recognized for that than for your theater performances, which were seen by considerably less people. Why would I get upset by that?
Ian McKellen
#86. I have got prostate cancer, and I have to keep monitoring that. It's no problem, it's under control and I'm very cool about it, but other people are dying from it.
Ian McKellen
#87. I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.
Ian McKellen
#88. You put anyone in the outfit, and they look like Gandalf. Not that clever.
Ian McKellen
#89. Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.
Ian McKellen
#90. As for the clarity of the 48 frames, I've heard people say that it looks odd, it's too demanding, there's too much information, you don't know where to look.
Ian McKellen
#91. In the '50s and '60s, the life of a gay man was a secret. Homosexuality was illegal, so you didn't draw attention to yourself.
Ian McKellen
#92. I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.
Ian McKellen
#93. Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
Ian McKellen
#94. I am going around British secondary schools, as a gay man talking about my life, and encouraging schools to get rid of homophobic bullying and to care for their gay members of staff and their gay students.
Ian McKellen
#95. 2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it's flat. But 3D isn't. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it's ideal, I think.
Ian McKellen
#96. Elijah looks angelic but his beauty of spirit is what makes his Frodo leap out of the screen. Unalloyed goodness is one of the most difficult attributes to act.
Ian McKellen
#97. The press like to talk to actors. They mustn't be surprised when actors talk back to them.
Ian McKellen
#98. I am lucky, I don't have aches and pains. I do Pilates regularly, which is a series of stretching exercises, and I recommend it to anyone of my age because the temptation is not to exercise when you get older. Well, you should.
Ian McKellen
#99. Television can take anything. It can take the most exaggerated of storytelling forms.
Ian McKellen
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