Ian Mckellen Quotes
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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.
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I love the Broadway audiences, who relish live drama and don't hesitate to display their enthusiasm.
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There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay.
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I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn't know they had got it, and it went on the rampage.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me.
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Some relationships get easier as you get older, depending on what sort of person you are. I don't think I've got any better at them.
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Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.
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You always think that 70 is the end of the road: 'Somebody died when they were 73; good life'. You're closer to death, and you better make sure you don't waste too much of your time doing things you don't want to do. No point in saying things you don't believe in.
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I was a shy gay man at a time when it was illegal to be gay.
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I love working in New York.
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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.
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I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.
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Tony Blair is not a villain, but he's played the part very well.
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On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.
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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.
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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.
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I'll never put my memoirs in print.
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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.
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What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?