Sir Ian McKellen - old master Gandalf

It took a while for Sir Ian McKellen to warm to his role, but warm he did, writes HELEN BARLOW.

In person, Sir Ian McKellen may have lost the beard, the cloak, the hat but he has the same twinkle in the eye that he has as he plays the powerful wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. No one can ward off the forces of evil with such Shakespearean wrath, shouting "You shall not pass!" as convincingly as McKellen.

Gandalf is imposing - it's no surprise that his image, more than any other, has been used to promote the film so far.

"Gandalf is an archetypal wizard, related to Merlin, maybe even Prospero, but he is also unlike any other," says McKellen. "He is very much his own man. And it's not that he is tall, it's that the hobbits are small. The wizard's hat helped create the mystique. I knew I'd found the character when I found that," he says.



Today, McKellen is dressed casually in comfortable corduroy trousers, a hippy open-necked white shirt (he is also vegetarian) and brown leather toe-sandals, and he wears a greenstone pendant he treasures from his New Zealand sojourn.

While McKellen is happy to be earning big Hollywood bucks for the first time in his career, he is not in it for the money - as his years of struggle to bring his visionary adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III to the screen attests.

Clearly he likes to work with people he respects, and he has a huge respect for The Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson.

"Every dollar that's been spent on this film is seen on the screen," McKellen notes. "It's not in the pockets of anybody involved, whether they're actors or anyone else. I think everyone has worked way above what was expected of them as far as their salary is concerned.

"It's one of the remarkable things about it. The hidden ingredient in this is love - love of the project, the love of the genius of Tolkien. There was an attention to get it right for the Tolkien fans and to make it interesting for those who are not. People will read the books when they see the films."

McKellen speaks with awe about the effect the movie is already having. "The annual income in Britain from the Tolkien estate doubled last year, that's before the films come out. Four hundred million people logged on to the website by the middle of this year."

The filming of the epic provided a break from the real world for a vast array of people, who all entered Tolkien's Middle-earth together. They evolved into a rather unusual family who collaborated for more than a year.

"It's a constant joy of my career to have been able to work with people of different disciplines, experiences, ages," says McKellen. "You work with old and young and you bond together. Age becomes irrelevant. What becomes important is that you want to work together on this project."

His look for Gandalf, the good wizard who leads the Fellowship of the Ring in its fight against the evil Sauron, evolved out of that collaboration, rather than research.

"There's a little-known chapter in one of Stanislovsky's books on acting, where he surprisingly, to me, says that if you're having trouble getting into the part, sit in front of the mirror and start applying the makeup that you think would be appropriate, and there may, if you're lucky, come a moment when you stop seeing yourself and see the character.

"When I was subjected to two days of trial makeups with expert wig-makers, beard- and moustache-makers and prosthetics and people who apply paint, plus the costumers, there was a moment when I looked in the mirror and saw not me but Gandalf - and that was before I had any discussions with Peter and other experts about how I would speak it or act it.

"It wasn't a question of sitting down and poring over the books on my own. Nothing in this movie was done on our own, it was all done in good company."

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Feature: Lord of the Rings