With a genial, whiskery grin, Sir Ian McKellen is peering down into his Zoom camera, the angle familiar to anyone who might have played a hobbit to his Gandalf. He’s at home in East London’s Limehouse, where he’s the co-owner of a nearby riverside pub and where he’s been spending more time after an accident at work. Playing Falstaff in Player Kings, a condensed take on Shakespeare’s Henry IV: Parts 1 and 2, he tumbled off stage during a fight scene at the Noel Coward Theatre in June, fracturing a wrist and chipping a vertebra. It could have been worse, he says later, but the extra padding of the famously corpulent character’s costume cushioned his front-row landing.
Coincidentally, much of his new movie – the reason for our chat – is also set on and off the West End stage. In The Critic, McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, the all-powerful theatre reviewer for the Daily Chronicle during the 1930s. When there’s a threat to his privileged, in-the-closet existence, Erskine turns devious and manipulative. The film is loosely based on the 2015 novel Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn, itself a pastiche of 1930s murder mysteries, in which the Erskine character wasn’t as prominent but who a Guardian reviewer described as a “Falstaffian monster”. The book was adapted by screenwriter Patrick Marber (Closer), and directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, And When Did You Last See Your Father?).
McKellen’s waspish turn as Erskine rather runs away with the film as it spins a tale of intrigue involving an actress (Gemma Arterton), the Chronicle’s new proprietor (Mark Strong) and his son-in-law (Ben Barnes) among others.
After Gandalf, I got an awful lot of parts of old people. I mean very old people – like God
January will mark 25 years since a 60-year-old McKellen arrived in New Zealand to begin playing Gandalf, a role he reprised a decade later in The Hobbit films. And he says he wouldn’t mind putting on the wizard’s hat one more time in the forthcoming new Lord of the Rings movie project – The Hunt for Gollum, to be directed by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis, and produced by Peter Jackson.
And last month marked 60 years since McKellen’s first appearance in the West End for the play A Scent of Flowers, which, helped by good reviews, led to him joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company alongside Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi.
Your early career would have benefited from reviewers like Erskine?
Yes, it did. I’ve never been frightened of critics, because I knew one when I was growing up – I was at school with the son of the local critic of the Bolton Evening News, our local paper, but it had its own drama critic, John Wardle. He had been an actor and I knew him when he acted still for the local amateur company that I used to pop out with a little bit. The amusing thing is that his son, Irving Wardle, who went to my school and played Hamlet after university, became a critic himself. He was the drama critic of the Times in London. Early on at university, drama critics from the national papers used to come to Cambridge and review our undergraduate efforts. So, by the time I finished at Cambridge, I had a string of reviews that I could point to and say, “Look, I’m already in the business”, and that rather made up for not going to drama school. Yes, critics have perhaps, on the whole, been a bit too kind to me over the years, but I’m not grumbling.
Did he remind you of any other characters you might have played?
No, I don’t think so. That’s one of the questions I asked myself about a potential job. Is this a part I’ve already played? After Gandalf, I got an awful lot of parts of old people. I mean very old people – like God – and they weren’t particularly interesting, because it was territory I had already trampled. But no, Jimmy didn’t remind me of anybody I knew or had played. Of course, he’s gay like me in a time when that was a real difficulty for people, it being against the law. So that of course, was of interest to me. It was an enjoyable character to get hold of. It was a smashing part.
He’s not likable, but he’s compelling in his vindictiveness.
Yes. It’s not always helpful for an actor to judge the character he’s playing … because when someone’s behaving badly, it doesn’t always occur to them what other people might think. It was a bit of a shock when, having played Jimmy and seen everything from his point of view … when I saw the finished film, I saw what everybody else sees – absolutely outrageous behaviour. But the reason he behaves as he does, speaks as he does, enjoys the job of criticism as he does, is all rooted in his own failings, really. If, as a gay man, you have been chastised by society, criminalised for something over which you don’t feel you have any control, is it any surprise that when fate turns against you, you return that vituperation which has been visited upon you? I think that makes a lot of sense. I knew people of his generation who behaved harshly towards people, and I’m thinking of directors, and in many cases, who had themselves been treated harshly by society and I think it curdled their conscience a bit. I’m not saying that this is a treatise on how we should all be nice to gay people. It’s not. It’s that if you find the story a little bit far-fetched, consider that those were not ordinary times that he was living in. It’s a melodramatic story, but it’s a melodramatic decade.
Was he fun to play?
Yes, well, the devil has the best tunes. And the actor who’s played Iago knows that that’s the part ‒ not Othello ‒ and Macbeth, too. I’ve played some real tricky people who behaved badly. And there’s always a reason deep down why it happens – ambition or revenge, whatever it may be. The best lines go with that.
I think I shan’t retire unless I absolutely have to.
How’s the health after your fall?
It’s kind of you to ask. I did very little physical damage, and most of it is fractured wrist ‒ what anyone gets when they fall off a bike. But the shock of it has remained, and I’m having to deal with that, really. It was a sort of shame that I’d done something so unprofessional as to lose my footing, not entirely my fault, I don’t think, but then not being able to complete the job and leave the production that I was enjoying so much. I still have a residue of that negativity and simply the shock. Human beings trip up all day long. It’s only when you’re in your 80s that a trip can become something very serious, a broken hip or ribs, none of that in my case. I’ve decided not to work for the rest of this year and I’m really enjoying being at home and seeing friends who I don’t always get to see. I do a little bit more walking than normal, and I’ve been to see a few nice things: music concerts, for example, that I normally wouldn’t be able to get to. I’ve kept up with the news. I’ve caught up with my correspondence. I’m left with a few scripts that people have kindly sent me, so life, life is busy. I’m sleeping more than normal, which I enjoy, and I’m doing lots of exercise. I do Pilates, I have a trainer strengthening my muscles. I do a bit of acupuncture and osteopathy All these disciplines are all aimed at the same outcome – to make me able to forget the accident. It seems to be working.
This time off isn’t a rehearsal for retirement?
I think I shan’t retire unless I absolutely have to. If the legs give way or the memory gives away, that would be a sign that it’s time to relax. Work is a habit as much as anything else, but it’s a hobby. It’s something I really enjoy doing.
You appear to have got the hang of it, too.
It’s taken some time, but I’ve got there. As long as people want me in their work, I couldn’t be happier, really.
Does the acting and everything that goes with it keep you young?
Oh, it gets you out of bed in the morning. Yes, I’m usually the oldest person in the company these days. It doesn’t seem that long since I was the youngest member of the company. I’ve always enjoyed that about our work, that you do meet on an equal level with people of all experiences and ages. And it doesn’t matter whether the part’s a large one or a small one, when the camera’s rolling or the audience arrives, we’re all up there doing it together and we depend on each other. I always feel that I’m still learning and discovering how to do the job, particularly in front of the camera. Everything about the job is enjoyable, but particularly being treated as an equal by younger people, just as I treat them as equals.
Surely, those young actors would be bending your ear for career and acting advice?
No, they don’t. Oh, occasionally, someone will come up and ask something. Occasionally, I will risk saying to an actor, ‘’Perhaps you don’t realise, but if you did this rather than that, you might get the laugh.” On the whole, I think actors avoid criticising each other, there’s plenty of people around to do that. People do like hearing stories about the old days about our job. I don’t mind being old, and somebody else usually gets the coffee and helps you to the car. If there is a car.
There’s that Lord of the Rings: Hunt for Gollum film in the works. Has anyone been in touch?
They have been in touch at the highest level but until they are written, they can’t plot it fully, and dates have not been mentioned. So, if it happens, I can’t think what would give me greater pleasure than to come back to New Zealand. But who knows, they may not be filming it in New Zealand. I have no details. I’m not a reliable source. But I’m being told it’s going to happen.
Of the three senior British actors who were on Lord of the Rings – you, Ian Holm and Christopher Lee – you are the last one left. And apart from Anthony Hopkins, there are not many actors of your vintage still active …
Some actors carry on, some don’t. for a variety of reasons. Anyone in their 80s will tell you that their friends are dying, and death becomes much more a fact of life than it is when you’re young, when death is a surprise and something unusual and horrific. It isn’t always horrific when somebody dies … you’re very aware, as each person dies, that you are being left stranded with fewer and fewer contemporaries, but I’ve got a lot of young friends, and so I don’t feel, with each death, that the world is a lesser place. There are always others who are full of life. I’m just saying that death is not, as it approaches, something to resent or be frightened of.
How do you regard Gandalf now, someone you first played 25 years ago and who you will forever be identified with?
He’s on the side of the angels, and he has his moments where the temper goes, but on the whole, he’s nice to people and wants people to be happier and is at their service. This is not Iago. This is not Richard III or Macbeth. He’s a thoroughly, good character and yet rich to play. So quite unusual.
I’d just played Magneto in the X-Men movies and I found myself in two big franchises. I carried on being able to do my theatre work, which I enjoyed and which I felt I was more expert in than film work. So, I’ve been able to balance the two ever since. I have made films regularly, almost one a year since I started acting. It’s just that you’ve never seen them because they weren’t very good. But Lord of the Rings, I mean, the luck to be in a classic … little children want to come and meet you. They know I’m not Gandalf. It’s rather like going to see Santa Claus in the shop. I always knew as a kid this wasn’t the real Santa Claus and I think kids understand I’m not the real Gandalf. He’s at home somewhere. l
The Critic is in cinemas from October 31.