Background

Ian McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, United Kingdom. He is the son of Margery Lois (née Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen. McKellen also has a sister, Jean.

Education

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, McKellen's family moved to Wigan. In his earliest years, Ian slept under the iron bomb-proof table in the dining-room. Overcoming diphtheria when he was three, he was shortly after attending the nursery school attached to the Dicconson Street Wesleyan Primary School in the centre of the town.

Later he attended Bolton School where he acted at Bolton Little Theatre. In 1958, McKellen, at the age of 18, won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English literature. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960.

Career

Ian McKellen started his acting career at Cambridge University theatre known as the Marlowe Society, where he appeared in 23 plays over the course of 3 years. McKellen appeared in such plays as Henry IV, Cymbeline and Doctor Faustus. He made his first professional appearance in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre, as Roper in A Man for All Seasons. After four years in regional repertory theatres, he made his first West End appearance, in A Scent of Flowers. In 1965 he was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic. He made his breakthrough performances of Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II at the Edinburgh festival in 1969. In the 1970s and 1980s McKellen became a well-known figure in British theatre, performing frequently at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, where he played several leading Shakespearean roles, including the title role in Macbeth. In 2007 he returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company, in productions of King Lear and The Seagull. In 2009 he appeared in a very popular revival of Waiting for Godot at London's Haymarket Theatre. In October 2017, McKellen played King Lear at Chichester Festival Theatre and in 2018 he performed the play at the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End.

McKellen made his screen debut in 1966 playing a soldier in the unfinished and unreleased Mirisch Brothers World War I epic, The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling, starring Gregory Peck. It would be another two years before McKellen found his way into a film that made it to the theatres. In 1968, McKellen played the fur-clad, Viking-fighting Roger the Bandit in Clive Donner's Alfred the Great, starring David Hemmings and Michael York. That same year, McKellen played a more contemporary role, the small but pivotal part of a gay television host in A Touch of Love, a film about single motherhood in the 1960s. In 1979, Ian McKellen finally found a role worthy of his talent – playing D.H. Lawrence in Priest of Love. He followed up his film performance with a Tony Award-winning portrayal of Salieri in Broadway's Amadeus in 1981. During the 1980s, McKellen appeared in four films, only two of which received any kind of significant theatrical release. In David Hare's Plenty, McKellen had a supporting role as a British Foreign Service officer, Sir Andrew Charleson. But it was in Scandal that McKellen showed off his range by played John Profumo, M.P. During the 1990s, he made seventeen films, almost doubling his entire film output of the previous three decades. He starred in such films as Wept from the Sea, Restoration, And the Band Played On, and Six Degrees of Separation. Ian McKellen also taught at Oxford as Professor of Contemporary Theatre in 1991.

In 1996 McKellen starred in the film Richard III and later he was cast as Nazi war criminal-in-hiding, Kurt Dussander, in Apt Pupil. After that he played in Gods and Monsters that earned the British actor the widespread admiration of American audiences. In 1999 McKellen was cast, again under the direction of Bryan Singer, to play the comic book supervillain Magneto in the 2000 film X-Men and its sequels X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand. He later reprised his role of Magneto in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past. While filming the first X-Men film in 1999, McKellen was cast as the wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson's three-film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (consisting of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King). He provided the voice of Gandalf for several video game adaptations of the Lord of the Rings films, then reprised the role on screen in Jackson's film adaptation of The Hobbit, which was released in three parts from 2012 to 2014. In November 2013, McKellen appeared in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary comedy homage The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. In 2017, McKellen portrayed Cogsworth in the live-action adaptation of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The same year, he performed a new one-man show for a week at Park Theatre. In 2019, McKellen starred in The Good Liar with Helen Mirren, and additionally played Gus the Theatre Cat in Cats.

Ian McKellen is an Audiobook narrator of Michelle Paver's series Wolf Brother, Spirit Walker, Soul Eater, Outcast, Oath Breaker, and Ghost Hunter. McKellen appears on the Scissor Sisters track "Invisible Light". He also appears as himself alongside George Ezra in the latter's music video for "Listen to the Man".

Achievements

• Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor who achieved worldwide fame for his film roles, including James Whale in Gods and Monsters, Magneto in the X-Men films, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. He is the recipient of five Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Saturn Awards and four Drama Desk Awards. McKellen was also nominated for two Academy Awards and four BAFTAs.
  
  Ian McKellen was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979. In 1991 he was knighted for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality in the 2008 New Year Honours. In 2014 McKelle was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.

Works

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  • Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny

    (In the early 20th Century, Russian Czar Nicholas II (Ian ...)

    1996
  • Swept From the Sea

    (Amy (Rachel Weisz), a maid in the house of wealthy Miss S...)

    1997
  • A Touch Of Love

    (Intellectually driven doctoral student Rosamund Stacey (S...)

    1969
  • The Shadow

    (Based on the 1930's comic strip, the film is about how su...)

    1994
  • The Lord of the Rings

    (A young hobbit, Frodo, who has found the One Ring that be...)

    2001
  • Six Degrees of Separation

    (When compassionate Manhattan art dealers Stockard Channin...)

    1993
  • X-men: Days of Future Past

    (Wolverine travels back in time to stop Mystique from assa...)

    2014
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

    (Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, is persuaded into accompanying a...)

    2012
  • Gods and Monsters

    (Once a powerful Hollywood director best known for "Franke...)

    1998
  • Apt Pupil

    (A sixteen-year-old honor student discovers a Nazi war cri...)

    1998
  • X-Men: The Last Stand

    (The discovery of a cure for mutations leads to a turning ...)

    2006
  • Scandal

    (Stephen Ward (John Hurt) regularly employs attractive you...)

    1989
  • X-Men

    (Two mutants find themselves torn between two conflicting ...)

    2000
  • Macbeth

    (Trevor Nunn's highly acclaimed production of Macbeth foll...)

    1979
  • Countdown to War

    (Based on a play, the story details the dramatic negotiati...)

    1989
  • Beauty and The Beast

    (Belle, a village girl, embarks on a journey to save her f...)

    2017
  • The Good Liar

    (Career con artist Roy Courtnay can hardly believe his luc...)

    2019
  • And the Band Played On

    (Matthew Modine is a doctor who tracks a deadly epidemic h...)

    1993
  • Jack & Sarah

    (After his wife, Sarah, dies during childbirth, Jack, an a...)

    1995
  • Loving Walter

    (Walter (Ian McKellen) is a mentally disabled man who depe...)

    1982
  • Richard III

    (A murderous lust for the British throne sees Richard III ...)

    1995
  • Plenty

    (Susan Traherne (Meryl Streep) is trying to put find her p...)

    1985
  • Hobbit, The: The Desolation of Smaug

    (Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, and his companions face great da...)

    2013
  • Priest of Love

    (In his first starring role, Sir Ian McKellen gives a sens...)

    1981
  • Bent

    (Max is gay and as such is sent to Dachau concentration ca...)

    1997
  • X2: X-Men United

    (Nightcrawler, a mutant, tries to murder the president of ...)

    2003
  • The Wolverine

    (Logan travels to Tokyo to meet Yashida, an old acquaintan...)

    2013
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

    (The former Fellowship members prepare for the final battl...)

    2003
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

    (Frodo and Sam arrive in Mordor with the help of Gollum. A...)

    2002

Religion

Despite the fact that his mother was Christian and father was a priest, Ian McKellen considers himself to be an atheist. However, he has become an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church and obtained his credentials so he could perform the wedding of his X-Men co-star, Patrick Stewart.

Politics

Ian McKellen claimed he doesn't usually get involved in politics. However, in 2017 he broke his silence to urge voters to back Wes Streeting, the Labour MP for Ilford North. McKellen said that Streeting is one of the greatest young politicians.

Views

Ian McKellen is a prominent gay rights activist. He announced that he was a gay man for the first time on BBC Radio in 1988, although he had come out in his personal and professional lives decades earlier. McKellen co-founded Stonewall, an LGBT rights lobbying group in the United Kingdom named after the 1969 Stonewall riots. The initial aim of the group was to obtain the abolition of Section 28 of the Local Government Act passed the previous year, which prohibited any promotion of homosexuality in British schools. He has stated that some of his friends refer to him by the nickname "Serena."

McKellen is also patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, Oxford Pride, GAY-GLOS, LGBT Foundation. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to young, homeless and troubled LGBT people. McKellen has taken his activism internationally. In 2014, he was named in the top 10 on the World Pride Power list.

In April 2010, along with actors Brian Cox and Eleanor Bron, McKellen appeared in a series of TV advertisements to support Age UK. McKellen also has a history of supporting individual theatres. He took part in the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony in London as Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Quotations: "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."

"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."

"Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy."

"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."

"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."

Membership

Ian McKellen was one of the founding members of the influential gay rights organization Stonewall UK.

Personality

Entrepreneurial and progressive, Ian McKellen is ever-striving, heading for the top, and enjoying an enterprising, ambitious and determined personality to do things well, and an unyielding dedication to his plan until the goals are achieved. He owns East End pub The Grapes, in Limehouse.

Connections

Ian McKellen began a relationship with Brian Taylor, a history teacher from Bolton, in 1964. Their relationship lasted for eight years, ending in 1972. In 1978 he met his second partner, Sean Mathias, at the Edinburgh Festival. This relationship lasted until 1988, and according to Mathias, was tempestuous, with conflicts over McKellen's success in acting versus Mathias's somewhat less-successful career. The two remained friends with Mathias later directing McKellen in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2009.

Father:

Denis Murray McKellen

Mother:

Margery Lois

Sister:

Jean McKellen

(1934 – 2003)

ex-partner:

Brian Taylor

ex-partner:

Sean Mathias

Sean Gerard Mathias is a Welsh-born theatre director, film director, writer and actor.

Friend:

Ian Charleson

A friend of Ian Charleson and a great admirer of his work, McKellen contributed a chapter to the 1990 book, For Ian Charleson: A Tribute.

References

• Ian Mckellen: An Unofficial Biography Ian McKellen was catapulted to international superstardom by the phenomenal success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and there has never been a better time to assess the life and career of one of the world's greatest stage and screen actors.
  2008
• Ian McKellen: A Biography The definitive biography of Sir Ian McKellen from an acclaimed biographer In 2001, Ian McKellen put on the robe and pointed hat of a wizard named Gandalf and won a place in the hearts of Tolkien fans worldwide. Though his role in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings introduced him to a new audience, McKellen had a thriving career a lifetime before his visit to Middle Earth.
  2019