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[There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot.
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
Actors
Use
Nothing
Uses
Except
Actor
Special
Imagination
More quotes by Ian Mckellen
We are very lucky to be men because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.
Ian Mckellen
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
Most of the time when you do a job, a play or a film, you're wondering, Will there be an audience?
Ian Mckellen
In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Ian Mckellen
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
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
2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it's flat. But 3D isn't. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it's ideal, I think.
Ian Mckellen
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
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
All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.
Ian Mckellen
There's no sex in Middle Earth.
Ian Mckellen
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
I've had enough of being a gay icon! I've had enough of all this hard work, because, since I came out, I keep getting all these parts, and my career's taken off. I want a quiet life. I'm going back into the closet. But I can't get back into the closet, because it's absolutely jam-packed full of other actors.
Ian Mckellen
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
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
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
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
The performance is created by the director. The actor is the material. And I think that has to be true.
Ian Mckellen
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
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.
Ian Mckellen
