Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Care
Gay
Thing
Significant
Think
Private
Thinking
Public
Start
Talking
Identified
Others
Declare
Another
Sexuality

More quotes by Ian Mckellen

Image
In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.
Ian Mckellen
Image
If you're sounding right, you're probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right - if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were - really landed on it.
Ian Mckellen
Image
[There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot.
Ian Mckellen
Image
Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if youre not careful.
Ian Mckellen
Image
It may be my rather puritanical upbringing at odds with my inborn laziness that makes me feel guilty at the end of the day, unless I am able to point at some achievement. But this need be no more impressive than cooking a meal or going for a long walk.
Ian Mckellen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think I'm a bit gruffer than I used to be, and I'm certainly older.
Ian Mckellen
Image
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
Image
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.
Ian Mckellen
Image
It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.
Ian Mckellen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel.
Ian Mckellen
Image
I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.'
Ian Mckellen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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