|
 "They know you're not really Gandalf, but I know Gandalf, so
they want to meet me," McKellen, 75 and looking every bit the
wizard he is on screen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five
Armies", told Reuters on Tuesday after the world premiere.
"It's rather like going to see Santa Claus in the shop, even
though you know it's not the real Santa Claus - or at least I
did; didn't you?" he said with a mock quizzical glance.
McKellen has played Gandalf in all six of the movies based on
J.R.R. Tolkien's tales for young adults. So he has carried the
series, which has now reached its finale, perhaps as much as any
other person, apart from director Peter Jackson.
McKellen is also the mutant Magneto in the X-Men movies, part of
a spectacular late-blooming Hollywood career that only really
began at about age 50, after decades of doing Shakespeare and
what is sometimes called "legitimate theater".
To him, the words are different but the techniques are the same.
"I think with Shakespeare you can be required to do absolutely
anything at the turn of a sixpence - suddenly you go into a
battle, suddenly you utter something passionate.
"So if you're suddenly doing what otherwise might seem rather
ridiculous things in Middle Earth you think, 'Well, let's do it
and trust the storyteller'...," he said. "It's the same with
Magneto really - yeah, raise that car, destroy that bridge, yes,
lead that battle. It's all possible."
While riding high on the lucrative X-Men and Middle Earth
franchises - the first Hobbit movie took in more than $1 billion
- McKellen also has been polishing his stage image. He was in a
well-received production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"
in which he played Estragon to his great mate Patrick Stewart's
Vladimir, most recently in New York City.
[to top of second column] |
McKellen said he had no intention of reviving the famous Beckett
play again, after some 450 performances.
But he said he and Stewart, with whom the openly gay McKellen has a
well-publicized "bromance", are thinking of bringing Harold Pinter's
"No Man's Land" - which they played in rotation with Godot in New
York - to London.
As for the "bromance", it produced a flurry of charming "selfies"
posted on the Internet of Stewart and McKellen at various famous New
York City locations.
"That's a wonderful joke in this country - especially a Yorkshireman
(Stewart) and a Lancastrian (McKellen) to get on, since we've been
fighting since the Middle Ages," McKellen said.
He shows no signs of slowing down. He is embarking on a second
season of his elderly gay-couple television comedy "Vicious" and
will be playing in a remake of the play and movie "The Dresser"
about an ageing actor and his wardrobe assistant.
And what will his legacy be, after a fantastic run in stage and
film? "I always said that when I die it will say here lies Gandalf,
he came out."
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
