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Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

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
Acting
Process
Experience
Character
Expressing
Different
Discovering
Personality
Personal
Playing

More quotes by Ian Mckellen

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Why live outside the US? Do you want health care or safe food products or democracy or something? They're all overrated. Stay for the excellent cable TV.
Ian Mckellen
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It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.
Ian Mckellen
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If I was on a march at the moment I would be saying to everyone: Be honest with each other. Admit there are limitless possibilities in relationships, and love as many people as you can in whatever way you want, and get rid of your inhibitions, and we'll all be happy.
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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I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.
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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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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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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Kids are coming out earlier and earlier - some, as young as twelve now - and schools need to take that into account.
Ian Mckellen
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I am going around British secondary schools, as a gay man talking about my life, and encouraging schools to get rid of homophobic bullying and to care for their gay members of staff and their gay students.
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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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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Most of the time when you do a job, a play or a film, you're wondering, Will there be an audience?
Ian Mckellen
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I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.
Ian Mckellen
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It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It`s very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California.
Ian Mckellen
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You would be surprised how many directors don't know what they want. They might not know what they want until they see it, they might know what they want but no idea how to get it out of the actor, then you've both got a problem.
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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I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887-1976) lived and painted.
Ian Mckellen
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I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things.
Ian Mckellen
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I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.
Ian Mckellen