Top 100 Mckellen's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. The audience's expectations are ever-present.
Ian McKellen
#3. I'm not experienced enough, or certain enough of my acting on the screen to say to a director, "You are wrong, I am right. I will only do it this way." I could never feel that, I wish I could be absolutely certain. But on the stage, it's different. I know where I am on the stage.
Ian McKellen
#4. There's lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.
Ian McKellen
#5. The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of 'The Hobbit,' is of a kid's adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted.
Ian McKellen
#6. I'm a latecomer to popular TV. This is rather new to me, being in a sitcom. It's been an ambition of mine.
Ian McKellen
#7. I always walk up the escalator on the Tube, and I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and that's good exercise, but you need more than that.
Ian McKellen
#8. A few years ago, a friend said to me: "You do realize, Ian, when X-Men and Lord of the Rings come out, your life will totally change?" I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was right. My life has totally changed - but in a good way. Unbeknownst to me, it's given me a lot more confidence.
Ian McKellen
#9. If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you.
Ian McKellen
#10. Gandalf's a good guy, and it's a good part. He says the right things, he believes the right things. An actor can have fun with it.
Ian McKellen
#12. In the past, kids didn't tell their parents they were gay, so there were never the bust-ups. Some parents react so strongly to the news that their children are gay that the reaction is, 'Get out of our house.' There's a residue of old prejudices that are going to die hard.
Ian McKellen
#13. There's something wholesome about the theatre.
Ian McKellen
#14. It's a joy to be up close to Derek Jacobi's work. Alas, we haven't worked very much, over the years, since we were at university together, but I don't think I've missed many of his great shows and performances.
Ian McKellen
#15. I quite like it when I'm on the Tube and people offer me their seat. Sometimes I take it. The other day I was offered a seat by a pregnant lady. I thought, 'That's going a bit far.'
Ian McKellen
#16. Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.
Ian McKellen
#17. I got better as an actor, and still I'm getting better. That's only been possible because there's always been work.
Ian McKellen
#18. [There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot.
Ian McKellen
#19. Every time you work is a challenge. There's a constant worry about it, and it's a side of acting I don't like.
Ian McKellen
#20. It's only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous.
Ian McKellen
#21. Tony Blair is not a villain, but he's played the part very well.
Ian McKellen
#22. 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
#23. I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.
Ian McKellen
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company.
Ian McKellen
#28. In fact, my face has shrunk in the meantime, but it won't be particularly noticeable because it's covered up with hair. So I hope I'm not alarmed if I ever do sit through the five movies.
Ian McKellen
#29. When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.
Ian McKellen
#30. In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.
Ian McKellen
#31. 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
#32. That's the imagination that happens in the theater. That imagination is translated in film by the film magicians and all the technology.
Ian McKellen
#33. 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
#34. What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?
Ian McKellen
#35. It's my impression that I've done every job that I've been asked to do.
Ian McKellen
#36. I certainly don't disparage someone whose attitude towards their work is utterly different from mine - that's up to them.
Ian McKellen
#37. 'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime ... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
Ian McKellen
#38. I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.
Ian McKellen
#39. I am very lucky to be man because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.
Ian McKellen
#40. 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
#41. I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.
Ian McKellen
#42. Some directors don't tell you that it's not your fault, so you get increasingly depressed that you're not delivering what's required, and then you discover it's not you at all, it's something in the background that's out of focus.
Ian McKellen
#43. So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor?
Ian McKellen
#44. Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.
Ian McKellen
#45. It's easier to go from theatre to film than the other way round. In film you're absolutely loved and cossetted and cared for. In film your director makes your performance. In theatre you're carrying it all.
Ian McKellen
#46. Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
Ian McKellen
#47. I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
Ian McKellen
#48. Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.
Ian McKellen
#49. It's nice for me to be in touch with a younger generation.
Ian McKellen
#50. You see people in Hollywood trying to make blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's not possible. There's some god up there saying, 'You will fail now.' But I suppose that's true of us all.
Ian McKellen
#51. Anyone in public life who comes out, comes out primarily for themselves, and their life is immediately improved. That's what happened to me.
Ian McKellen
#52. 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
#54. In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Ian McKellen
#55. 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
#56. Bolton School has a great tradition in the liberal arts.
Ian McKellen
#57. 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
#58. I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.
Ian McKellen
#60. I'm dead against the idea that you should try to "cure" people of being gay.
Ian McKellen
#61. Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend ... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.
Ian McKellen
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.
Ian McKellen
#67. 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
#68. Why not celebrate those who want to marry and bring up a family?
Ian McKellen
#69. 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
#70. Success in the movies has pushed me to places I didn't know I was allowed to go.
Ian McKellen
#71. 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
#72. I have lots of fans, they are mostly under the age of 12, boys and girls.
Ian McKellen
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. There are some fantastic parts for older actors.
Ian McKellen
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. I don't have Gandalf the White's certainty about everything.
Ian McKellen
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.
Ian McKellen
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. My reaction to 3D is subtly. Things don't come out at you, but rather you - The audience come into the film.
Ian McKellen
#87. Acting is a very big part of what human beings do. A dog is always a dog, but we're always changing.
Ian McKellen
#88. 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
#89. It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.
Ian McKellen
#90. 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
#91. In any human-rights campaign, everybody must do what they can.
Ian McKellen
#92. I've always felt that 'X-Men' was about something serious. It wasn't just fantasy.
Ian McKellen
#93. 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
#94. 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
#96. Directed By: Peter Jackson Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen
Jamerson INC
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. Until I came out, my acting was all about disguise, and thereafter it became about telling the truth.
Ian McKellen
#100. 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
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