“No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar; I wonder if that is prejudice or chance,” So said Sir Ian McKellen earlier in 2016, querying the political inclusiveness of the Academy Awards. “My speech has been in two jackets… ‘I’m proud to be the first openly gay man to win the Oscar.’ I’ve had to put it back in my pocket twice.” Both of these performances, the first in ‘Gods and Monsters’ (1998) and ‘The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring’ (2002) were certainly Oscar worthy, and both proved to be finer performances than either of the winners of the respective years. Though McKellen may have been bereft of an Oscar, his filmography would be enough to please any actor.
Though he has amassed an impressive amount of credits, he had made few film appearances prior to his turn as John Profumo in 1989, which he made aged fifty. Previously, his attention was held in the theatre, for services of which he was knighted for in 1991. Selected credits included Salieri in ‘Amadeus’, the titular doctor in ‘ Dr.Faustus’ and his extraordinary Max in ‘Bent’. Years spent working for the Royal Shakespeare Company during the seventies would serve him well as an actor, working well in his stead later in his life as a film actor.
With a beautiful baritone voice and verbosity few Oxford professors possess, McKellen has proven to be to a worthy character actor, the apple of directors Peter Jackson and Bryan Singer’s eyes. It was, however, his work with Bill Condon that would prove his worthiest collaborator film, the two films they made two of the strongest performances McKellen has given in any medium, his first McKellen’s breakthrough role in Hollywood, the second one of the finest performances any performer has given in their late seventies. Other film parts McKellen has played are magical savants, clerical bigots, tormented convicts and persecuted addicts.
10: Six Degrees Of Separation (1993,Fred Schepisi): “I’m going to buy a copy of ‘Catcher In The Rhye’, at the airport, and read it” echoes Geoffrey Miller in his light South African accent. Talking to Will Smith’s Paul, McKellen throws the line away, both flippant and assured, hints of racial insecurity and pride there in his voice. Pirouetting the room as Smith delivers a monologue echoing the voice of Holden Caulfield, Miller acts vaguely suspiciously of the guest both Ouisa Kittredge (Stockard Channing) and Flan Kittredge (Donald Sutherland) welcome with open arms.
As befitting a White stereotype from South Africa in the mid-nineties (Nelson Mandela’s release had only been three years prior), Miller paints himself as a liberal, though is privy to mild racist remarks. Asked why he stays in South Africa, Miller responds” One has to stay there. To educate the black workers. And we’ll know we’ve been successful when they kill us. ” McKellen leaves it up to the audience to decide whether this remark is meant seriously or with tongue firmly placed in cheek. Perennially smirking as Paul Poitier (the self-proclaimed son of Sidney Poitier) attempts to con his hosts. Whether knowing or not, McKellen plays Miller as a parvenu, uncomfortable around the sound of blood, more concerned with wine than a person’s ailments.
McKellen cleverly allows Sutherland and Channing take most of the thunder, adding small gestures to the side of their performances, allowing audiences to interpret as they choose the thoughts and motivations of his character. A strong supporting role.
9: X-Men (2000, Bryan Singer): There was a time when comic book movies weren´t the hot property they are now. Nowadays golden treasures Martin Sheen, Jeremy Irons, Helen Hunt, Amy Adams and Glenn Close pop in and out of the comic book world and nobody blinks an eye-lid. And Ian McKellen is largely to thank for that. Even more so than Patrick Stewart (Stewart already had a foot in the mainstream, thanks to Star Trek), a Shakespearian actor of his calibre brought credence to the world of comic book movies, a mere three years after George Clooney visibly embarrassed himself with his Bat credit-card.
“I’ve always felt that ‘X-Men’ was about something serious. It wasn’t just fantasy.” he told reporters. Director Bryan Singer, promoting his third film ´X-Men: Days of Future Past´ told The Los Angeles Times Mckellen responded well to “the allegory of the mutants as outsiders, disenfranchised and alone and coming to all of that at puberty when their difference manifests. Ian is an activist and he really responded to the potential of that allegory.” Both director and star were openly gay men and related to the persecution of said mutants in their personal lives, as well as the obvious recognition that Magneto (nee Erik Lehnsherr) survived an ordeal at a concentration camp. True, Michael Fassbender and Matthew Vaughn went further with this psychological probing a decade later, but the ground steps were laid by McKellen and Singer, without whom the comic book world would not be the property it is today.
Capable to manipulate and control metallic objects, Magneto proved a strong character to play. “Why do none of you understand what I’m trying to do? Those people down there- they control our fate and the fate of every other mutant! Well, soon our fate will be theirs. “He screams at Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). It´s diabolical, but his point is justified. Unlike other Marvel villains, greed isn´t what motivates Magneto, injustice and retribution are. McKellen´s first entry into the public consciousness of pop culture, he would play Magneto in four successive films, his successor Michael Fassbender modelling his accent on a tutorial McKellen gave on ´Macbeth ‘in 1979.
8: Jack and Sarah (Tim Sullivan, 1995): Playing a recovering alcoholic is a must for any actor worth their salt. Nicholas Cage and James Coburn took home statuettes for their alcoholic turns, Peter O ‘Toole was rarely better than his inebriated turn in ‘My Favourite Year’, Daniel Craig has spent more time battling vodka than villains as James Bond! McKellen’s William is an altruistic helper, crippled by a former life of excessive drinking, but once sober, proves more capable of paternal instinct than Richard E.Grant’s Jack.
McKellen plays for broad laughs as he carries the newly born child high in the air, much to the shock of the baby’s grandmothers (played by Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins). But his sincerity is there, and once brought to attention, he gains the family’s trust.
McKellen brings s touch of tragedy to the proceedings, woken on the staircase, whiskey perennially laced into his drinks. Unnaturally thin, McKellen’s boney appearance makes him an undesirable babysitter. But his courtship with the equally flawed Jack allows audiences to placate their differences and warm to a generous hearted man, fuller with love than booze.
Under seen and underrated (Grant was perhaps too atypical looking to take off as a romantic heart throb in the manner of Hugh Grant), it has a warm heart attached to the film. McKellen recounted in 2000″ Jack and Sarah hasn’t enjoyed the same success as other English middle-class comedies shot in Notting Hill, but it was fun to be living at home in London and on a local location with so many talented old friends.”
7: Cold Comfort Farm (1995, John Schlesinger): There are few men as ferocious as Ian Paisley, but McKellen’s Amos Starkadder could bring the fury of God down on any man worthy of sin. ‘There’s no butter in hell’ he screams at a congregation of rural workers, evoking an afterlife so terrible, a life so miserable. “Amos Starkadder, the hell-fire preacher to his congregation of “Quiverers”, is a parody of the non-conformist preachers I remember from my childhood.”McKellen later reflected. “One of his attention-grabbing tricks was suddenly to stop the flow of his sermon and, gesturing to the back wall of the church, gasp: “I can see the children of Israel!” The congregation’s heads would turn round to follow his pointing finger. Amos would have admired that. “
Eccentric to the extreme, Starkadder bellows with provincial syllables, the fear of God by his side. One of McKellen’s more obviously comic performances, Starkadder is complete with putrid yellow teeth. Hair shaken, voice over his parishioners, McKellen’s parody is pitch perfect. “The quivering worshippers were played by local extras and Schlesinger wanted to shoot on their upturned faces early in the day, before boredom might set in.” McKellen remembered. ” Before I had finished, the extras were released and the sermon was preached to the few loyal professionals who stayed behind to give me the eyelines. Fortunately my voice took on a new strength and the resulting scene even makes me laugh.”
He’s not the only one. Arguably the funniest scene in the film (and the starry cast includes raconteurs Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margoyles and Stephen Fry), McKellen’s sermon wickedly comic. Laughter has rarely been this sinful!
6: Apt Pupil (1998, Bryan Singer): Bryan Singer, talking to The Hollywood Reporter spoke of his interest in McKellen “With Ian McKellen, we were actually introduced by a mutual friend early on. I had a list of a number of the sort of obvious older, European actors… I wanted, like with Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, to have this character played by someone who wasn’t as familiar to mainstream audiences, which Kevin wasn’t at the time.” McKellen’s nationality was another contributing factor: “I also thought that Ian brought a degree of British charm and flamboyance to this otherwise stoic German character. ” The two collaborated well and made three X-Men films together following their Stephen King adaptation.
Situated as a Nazi War criminal, McKellen’s Kurt Dussander is both vindictive and repentive. One senses that he feels the crimes he has committed, but know he has a darker side to him waiting to burn out from the edges. McKellen plays well off Brad Renfro’s Todd Rowden, a child with a harrowing obsession with Dussander’s past. McKellen wrote a tribute to Renfro on his website following Renfro’s untimely death in 2008.
Dussander is tenacious and retaliatory; a Nazi uniform is merely a uniform, Dussander is a menace in his own right. Threatening the child with exclamation “To the whole world, I am a monster. And you have known about me all this time. If I’m caught, when those reporters stick their microphones in my face it will be your name that I will repeat over and over again. Todd Bowden, Todd Bowden… “one senses Dussander is only a foot away from enacting a vengeance far nastier than any bullet could paint.
McKellen succeeds as the ageing terror, both frightful and plaintive. Merely fifty seven at the time of filming, McKellen is markedly convincing as a man encompassed by his seventies.
5: Scandal (1989): By McKellen’s own admission, he was never the first choice for a romantic lead. Too effete to be a sex symbol, too verbose to evoke mystery, simply too plain looking to radiate a sex appeal fellow thesp Anthony Hopkins radiated. Therefore, it is a great surprise to watch him play the part of lover as John Profumo, the balding middle-aged subject of Christine Keeler’s (Joanne Whaley) affection. The film proved a scapegoat for McKellen: admitting to The Hollywood Reporter, the part of a heterosexual lover seemed appealing: “The assumption is when you’ve come out that you’ll never be able to play anything but gay characters again. So, I thought that was a nice message to the world that a gay actor could play a straight man.”
True, much of the film is open to speculation (the real life Profumo Affair is shrouded by hushes and whispers, as befitting a member of the Conservative Party), though the consequences may have been the trigger behind his resignation in 1963. McKellen is perfectly cast as Profumo, much as the Secretary of the State of War would be the last person to suspect eliciting an affair with a nineteen year old model, so McKellen plays the ordinarity and mundanity devoid of suspicion.
“I have nothing to hide” he insists to Stephen Ward (John Hurt), an affectation that makes it hard to disagree with his feity. McKellen’s eyebrows leers over Keeler’s like a child longing for a sweet, an insatiable, carnal desire of inner indulgence. McKellen’s regal aristocratic nature works for the film’s benefit, the sixties in his grasp, his party on his back. The Pet Shop Boys (real life nineteen eighties friends of McKellen’s) wrote the film’s title track ‘Nothing Has Been Proved’, perhaps a returning gesture after McKellen guest appeared in their 1987 video ‘Heart’.
4: The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring (2001, Peter Jackson): Arguably McKellen´s most fondly remembered character, McKellen´s performance won him the applause of every critic in town, both as Gandalf The Grey and Gandalf The White. While Tolkien is universally adored these days, it, frankly, wasn´t always thus. Unless you were Robert Plant, admiring Tolkien simply wasn´t cool before 2001 and few fantasy films of recent decades had shown any worth, both ´The Never-ending Story ‘and ´Highlander´ suffering from appalling sequels and overindulgent exercises. Hence, McKellen, with his lack of Hollywood pizazz, was not New Line Cinema´s first choice for the role and pushed Peter Jackson away from McKellen to Sean Connery. Connery declined, as did Christopher Plummer, and Jackson reinstated his original choice in the film. And the result could not be any better.
As sweet as it would have been to hear Connery´s Scottish soliloquies, McKellen masters the role, the pose, the stance, the joviality, the intrigue, the esoteric nature of the series. As wretched as The Hobbit prequels were, nobody complained while McKellen was onscreen.
Although he played Gandalf six times, his debut remains his most memorable, a fiery speech opening the audience´s ears to the perils of Mordor, a fiery fall by the hands of the Balrog. He plays it serene and stoic, but battle heavy and world weary also. It´s his best performance as Gandalf. Don´t believe me? Then believe the Academy; they nominated him for supporting actor.
Best known for one perennially iconic line, McKellen re-used it a decade later visiting students at Oxford University in 2014. “‘If you don’t work hard, if you don’t do your revision, you know what will happen,” he asked, before holding himself with an imaginary staff. “You shall not pass´. Reading Fantasy provides long supporting advice.
3: Mr. Holmes (2015, Bill Condon): Sherlock’s indubitably very much in vogue at present. Robert Downey Jr took time away from his Iron Man paraphernalia to chase vagabonds throughout an opera house, Benedict Cumberbatch (literally) brought the old detective into the twenty first century, Johnny Lee Miller brought a heroin lock into Sherlock, Hugh Laurie’s House tipped his hat at the detective, David Mitchell wore an overtly large hat as the sleuth: all in their own way sharing a debt to Basil Rathbone.. Even with McKellen’s worthy credentials, originality would prove difficult Perfect then that Bill Condon allows McKellen to portray an ageing, reflective Holmes, harrowed by time, incarcerated by his memories. McKellen allows his younger contemporaries away with their showier portrayals, yet by doing so, he comes up with the most original and interesting Holmes since Rathbone pipe smoked his way through mysteries.
“I’ve decided to write the story down; as it was, not as John made it. Get it right, before I die.” he dictates to his younger companion Roger, irate his endeavours were altered by John Watson from fact to fiction. Fully aware that the life of a sleuth is not the subject of Hollywood films, he jokes “When you’re a detective, and a man comes to see you, it’s usually about his wife.”
McKellen, although nearly two decades younger than his character, brings a world weary sadness only age provides. One senses this is a man who has seen it all, lived it all, gave it all and felt it all. It’s there in McKellen’s desolate eyes, it’s there in the shake of his voice. McKellen and Condon prove a fine pair, the second of three collaborations the two would embark on (their third will be Disney’s live version of ‘Beauty and The Beast’ starring Emma Watson’). An excellent second collaboration, it had a similar quality to it as their first film, one which will be discussed dutifully
2: Richard III (1995, Richard Loncraine): Ian McKellen cut his teeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company, finessing his Macbeth’s, salivating his Juliet. His Richard III is magnificent, a superb re-imaging of Shakespeare’s great play, replacing the regal castles with Reichian symbols and nineteen thirties Nazi gear. Lauded when staged for the Royal National Theatre, McKellen and director Richard Loncraine re-adapted it for the big screen (both received writing credits for their work alongside the bard).
McKellen’s presence is steelier than the bullets that fire throughout the film’s finale, steamier than the fires that burn throughout. Eschewing the traditional image of Richard as physically immobilised, McKellen’s Richard stands above all his men, each an ant he can stamp on at any point, each a little person in his grand plan. Utilising the trick Kevin Spacey would later adopt for Frank Underwood, McKellen speaks to the camera, each aware of his nefarious plans. “Now is the winter of my discontent” he tells to a jovial audience as the film opens, a side glance to the camera with “That dogs bark at me as I halt by them” suggests all is not well in the state of his mind. Prone to nervous laughter, prone to violent tirades, no one is ever sure what Richard will do next.
McKellen is excellent, his involvement behind the scenes as both co-writer and uncredited producer works to make this the finest Shakespearian film adaptation of the last twenty five years. Talking to the BFI Southbank London in 2016, McKellen reflected ” “Neither of us [[Loncraine and McKellen]] made a penny from it, we gave all our salaries to make it and I’m very proud of it.” Dispute not with that: that would be lunacy!
1: Gods and Monsters (1998, Bill Condon): Talking in a correspondence, McKellen claimed that “Gods and Monsters was one of the most enjoyable films I have been involved with — partly because of the crew and cast whom Bill Condon (director and Oscar-winning screenplay writer) gathered together but also because of the subject matter. I knew nothing about James Whale until I started reading about him for the film and meeting some of his old friends. I admire his talent and his achievements as a film director and his honesty in being openly gay in the Hollywood of the 1950s when honesty of that sort was not thought to be the best policy.”
Bringing the role forth from a very personal place in his heart, McKellen gives every ounce of his soul into the performance as James Whale. Whether he’s himself or Whale or a combination of both is irrelevant, it is his honesty that matters most and what translates best onto the screen. Few actors have given such an honest performance in their lives; McKellen does.
An ageing man, ever infatuated with his youthful gardener (Brendan Fraser), McKellen brings a certain impassive dignity into the proceedings. Witty to the outside world (he recounts that his gardener has “never met a princess before, only queens” to Princess Margaret), but tortured within his confiding’s (“Hatred was the only thing that kept my soul alive. And amongst the men I hated… was my dear old dumb father, who put me in that hell in the first place.”), Whale is a chameleon, much as McKellen is. Perhaps McKellen’s most personal film role, McKellen brings Whale alive in a way that even the infamous director never brought Frankenstein’s Monster alive. Yes, that’s as Meta as it gets!
McKellen was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal, losing to Roberto Benigni, a greater disservice than McKellen’s loss to Jim Broadbent in 2002. But where statuettes come and go, celluloid remains implanted. James Whale will be forever eulogised and commemorated for McKellen’s work, as Whale’s life inspired McKellen to play him effectively. For once, art and life met centre of the proceedings; surely that’s better than any Oscar could ever be?