Tolkien, Hamlet and the queer icon. “I am happy that Gandalf appeared in my career”
He conquered the world as Gandalf, although his achievements had already made a mark in the history of British culture. As an actor and as an activist for LGBTQ+ rights. – Returning to New Zealand would be great, but I'm not going to wait for it to happen, says Ian McKellen in an exclusive interview with tvn24.pl. The actor can be seen as part of a limited number of cinema screenings of “Hamlet” directed by Sean Mathias. – The idea for Hamlet was that Ian, who is in his eighties, would play the main role – reveals Mathias.
Ian McKellen is a living legend – and that's no exaggeration. His life, artistic career and social involvement are the source for several, if not a dozen or so film and series scripts and stage texts. The world loved him as Gandalf in Peter Jackson's “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy based on JRR Tolkien. And he was the only one from the entire cast of this trilogy to receive a nomination Oscar in the acting category. Interestingly, McKellen and Cate Blanchett are the only two actors who starred in all six Tolkien adaptations directed by Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy).
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There are many indications that after a break of over 10 years, McKellen will play the role of Gandalf again. In May this year, Warner Bros. studio (part of the Warner Bros. Discovery group, which also owns tvn24.pl) announced that work on two more films in the “Lord of the Rings” series has started, and the producers include the creators of the original trilogy Peter Jackson, Fran Welsh and Philippa Boyens ( Oscar winner for the screenplay for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”). Whether McKellen will actually appear on the big screen again as Gandalf will become clear in the coming months.
Ian McKellen as the wizard GandalfWarner Bros
Gandalf, however, is just one of many threads in the biography of McKellen, who for decades has been considered the successor of the great Laurence Olivier – one of the greatest British actors in history. He started his acting career at the age of nine, appearing in school plays, including: by his older sister Jean. He loved the stage with all his heart, especially the Shakespearean repertoire. In 1958, 18-year-old Ian McKellen won a prestigious scholarship to St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge. Over the next three years, McKellen appeared in 23 plays. It was during this time – despite his young age – that he had the opportunity to cooperate with leading theater directors of the time, which had a huge impact on his further career.
His breakthrough was the title role in Shakespeare's play “Richard II” directed by Richard Cottrell in 1969. By the mid-1970s he was already one of the most respected theater actors. He then decided to conquer New York's Broadway and Hollywoodwhile at the same time creating subsequent memorable roles in the British theater, mainly from the Shakespearean repertoire. In short: McKellen delighted Broadway, among others, with the role of Salieri in “Amadeus”, for which he was awarded a Tony – the theatrical equivalent of an Oscar in USA. His film career gained momentum in the 1990s.
McKellen is not only a titan of contemporary theater, cinema and television. At the end of the 1980s, as an almost 50-year-old star of world theater and cinema, he publicly declared in one of his radio broadcasts that he was gay. Although the issue of his psychosexual orientation was not a secret in his surroundings, he had never been open about it before, explaining that he had no desire to get involved in politics. He reversed his decision when Margaret Thatcher's government pushed through a law known as Section 28, which obliged local authorities to England, Ireland Northern, Scotland and Wales to comply with the ban on the promotion of homosexuality and to demonstrate an accepting attitude towards homosexuality, which, according to legislators, was a threat to the traditional family. Interestingly, years later, Thatcher confessed that one of the last things she did as British Prime Minister was to recommend McKellen for knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, which happened in 1991.
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