I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. - Ian McKellen
I quite like it when I'm on the Tube and people offer me their seat. Sometimes I take it. The other day I was offered a seat by a pregnant lady. I thought, 'That's going a bit far.' - Ian McKellen
I think New York audiences are some of the brightest in the world, and certainly the most enthusiastic. - Ian McKellen
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
I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 - 1976) lived and painted. - Ian McKellen
I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book. - Ian McKellen
I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf. - Ian McKellen
I'm the sort of person who doesn't write in ink. I only write in pencil, so it can be rubbed out. - Ian McKellen
It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose. - Ian McKellen
'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics. - Ian McKellen
One school invited me down, as two pupils had come out, and the headmaster didn't know what to do about it. I said, 'How many students here are gay?' and he said, 'Just these two.' Clearly not. 'How many gay members of staff have you got?' He had no idea. And this was a concerned man. - 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
So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor? - Ian McKellen
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
The first film role I deliberately chose to play after I came out was a raging heterosexual, John Profumo. - Ian McKellen
The press like to talk to actors. They mustn't be surprised when actors talk back to them. - Ian McKellen
There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage. - Ian McKellen
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