Ian Mckellen Quotes
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I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
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I don't normally take to Yorkshiremen.
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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.
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I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 - 1976) lived and painted.
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I get pretty grumpy about TV.
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I got better as an actor, and still I'm getting better. That's only been possible because there's always been work.
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There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore.
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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?
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I think New York audiences are some of the brightest in the world, and certainly the most enthusiastic.
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I'm not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.
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There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay.
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When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.
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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.
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People on television have trouble with fame because audiences think they're their mates.
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No one seems to wash in Middle-earth.
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'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.
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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.
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Eventually, before I die, I hope to have written about every part I've played.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I used to comfort myself when I became an actor that it was a useful job, entertaining people. And it was important to do it as well as you possibly can.
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Magneto wants to cope with the difficulties thrust upon him by society and by his own nature.
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Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.