Ian Mckellen Quotes
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When I came out, I told my stepmother Gladys, and she just said she had known for years and was glad I wasn't lying anymore.
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I'm not someone who wears shades all the time and ducks into a darkened car in case I'm recognized - that would be absolute misery.
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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.
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The first film role I deliberately chose to play after I came out was a raging heterosexual, John Profumo.
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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.
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Gandalf is ever-present in my life. I like it.
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I like sleeping a lot.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud.
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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?'
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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.
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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.
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I don't any longer make any quality judgement between theater and cinema. They are different experiences for the audience, and they also are for the actors - although they have a lot in common.
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No actor wants to play to an empty house.
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There's lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.
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Gandalf is in Middle-earth to keep an eye on everybody, and that can be a rather serious matter.
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I don't really like being with people my own age for long periods, because all we talk about is our decrepitude, how the world is changing for the worse even though it isn't.
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We're very lucky, men, that there are these fabulous parts. Women - once you've done all the parts in Shakespeare, they start running out. So you can pick and choose and find something to energise you.
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There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage.
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You might be surprised by how interested young people are in older people.
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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.
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I came rather late to film. I've done an awful lot of theater before - before I discovered the camera, you know, seeing everything, requiring much less acting and - and much less presentation, much less projecting, more just being.