Ian Mckellen Quotes

I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.

Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.

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.

I have little routines in the theater. Once I've established something, like the order of putting on makeup and a costume, I have to invariably do it in the same order every time, even if I only did i...

I'm not someone who wears shades all the time and ducks into a darkened car in case I'm recognized - that would be absolute misery.

When you grumble about a taxi being dirty, people your own age will absolutely agree with you, whereas younger people say, 'You should be so lucky to have a taxi - I walk to work!' So I have lots of y...

I certainly don't disparage someone whose attitude towards their work is utterly different from mine - that's up to them.

I'm not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.

Even now, there are young actors who want careers as romantic leading men, and the best thing is not to reveal you're gay.

I am lucky, I don't have aches and pains. I do Pilates regularly, which is a series of stretching exercises, and I recommend it to anyone of my age because the temptation is not to exercise when you g...

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 conf...

The battle going on over gay marriage in America reveals an awful lot. The Bible belt - people hate gay people. Because the Bible tells them? No, the Bible tells them an awful lot of things that they...

The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was...

The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie.

Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.

What I particularly like about Broadway is the camaraderie and the friendship of other people in other shows. Everybody knows you're opening and cares about you. There's a real village atmosphere.

The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.

I have got prostate cancer, and I have to keep monitoring that. It's no problem, it's under control and I'm very cool about it, but other people are dying from it.

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.

You always think that 70 is the end of the road: 'Somebody died when they were 73 good life'. You're closer to death, and you better make sure you don't waste too much of your time doing things you do...