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Try and understand what part you have to play in the world in which you live. There's more to life than you know and it's all happening out there. Discover what part you can play and then go for it.

Ian Mckellen

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Ian Mckellen
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: May 25
Actor
Film Actor
Preface Author
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Theatrical Director
Voice Actor
County of York
Sir Ian Murray McKellen
Ian Murray McKellen
World
Discover
Happening
Understand
Part
Live
Play
Trying
Life
Happenings

More quotes by Ian Mckellen

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If you've got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed - I've just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.
Ian Mckellen
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Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.
Ian Mckellen
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I suspect the base that I'm working from is not particularly one of inquiry, but of memory of what I did last time.
Ian Mckellen
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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!
Ian Mckellen
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There are directors, and I think this is true of all directors, it would be true if I was a director - If the actor didn't want to do what I was suggesting, I would let him do it his way, and then I would say to him, Just give me one where you do what the director wants, and that, of course, is the take that's used.
Ian Mckellen
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On the day after 9/11, I walking through the smoke and the smells of New York. There were knots of policemen everywhere. As I went past one officer, he called out: Hi, Magneto. That's an indication of X-Men's extraordinary reach.
Ian Mckellen
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That was the big effect Lord of the Rings had on me. It was discovering New Zealand. And even more precious were the people- not at all like the Australians.
Ian Mckellen
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We are very lucky to be men because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.
Ian Mckellen
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You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk.
Ian Mckellen
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There's no sex in Middle Earth.
Ian Mckellen
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I'm a latecomer to popular TV. This is rather new to me, being in a sitcom. It's been an ambition of mine.
Ian Mckellen
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In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.
Ian Mckellen
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To know you are in the company with people who love and care for each other, as well as for whatever they are working on, is almost essential.
Ian Mckellen
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My memory of 3D movies is Fernando Lamas in a swashbuckling movie. And I suppose it had been the fifties, in which swords came out at you, bullets came out at you, things were thrown into the auditorium, apparently. All that sort of cheap, Oh, look at us, we've got 3D isn't in the film.
Ian Mckellen
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Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel.
Ian Mckellen
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When we'd suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, 'Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.' As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.
Ian Mckellen
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Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if youre not careful.
Ian Mckellen
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All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.
Ian Mckellen
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I think it's one thing to declare your sexuality, if you care about what that is. It's another thing to start talking in public about what you do in private and who you do it with. It's not that they [my significant others] don't want to be identified as gay, but that they don't want to be identified as ... with me.
Ian Mckellen
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In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Ian Mckellen