Ian McKellen spent decades as one of Britain’s most celebrated stage actors before Hollywood came calling, and looking back, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the 86-year-old reflected on how his path to global stardom differed from most.
He was already well-known in theatre circles long before he played Magneto in X-Men and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, but he was clear about the difference.
“I’d been well-known. I’d been on Broadway, the West End, toured the world. But nothing is like the fame that film brings.”
Growing up in Lancashire, McKellen never really saw film as part of his future, and his parents reinforced that view in their own way.
“When I thought of being an actor, I thought of being on a stage,” he said. His family had a particular mistrust of cinemas.
“My parents gave me the impression that cinemas were dangerous places. They called them flea pits because you caught diseases there.”
When a young McKellen asked an agent about moving into film, the advice he received was characteristically of its era.
“He said, ‘Wait until your late 20s, that’s when women find men most attractive,'” McKellen recalled with a laugh, noting the obvious irony, given that he came out publicly as gay in 1988.
He took the advice anyway, stayed in theatre through the 1960s and beyond, and wasn’t cast as Magneto until he was 60.
He is reprising that role in the MCU’s upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, and has hinted at a possible return to Middle Earth as Gandalf, but the project he speaks about with particular warmth is the Steven Soderbergh-directed The Christophers, an intimate drama that opens in cinemas on Friday, 10 April.
The difference in experience, he explained, comes down to the director’s physical presence on set.
On a Marvel production at Pinewood, “the directors come and talk to you, but whilst you’re filming they’re watching it from somewhere else.”
Soderbergh, who also operates as his own cinematographer, works differently. “He’s there with you behind the camera. I think that was what was so enjoyable about it.”
The Christophers also stars Michaela Coel, Jessica Gunning and James Corden.
McKellen’s other upcoming projects include Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, in cinemas on 13 November, and Avengers: Doomsday, opening 18 December.
