Filmography Ian McKellen

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor, who is recognised as one of the greatest actors alive. 
 
A recipient of multiple Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations, McKellen's work spans genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. His most notable film roles include Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Magneto in the X-Men films, and Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code. 
 
McKellen was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality, in the 2008 New Year Honours. 
 
McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget—I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old." 
 
McKellen's father, Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer, was a lay preacher, and both of his grandfathers were preachers. His great-great-grandfather, James McKellen, was a "strict, evangelical Protestant minister" in Ballymena, County Antrim. At the time of Ian's birth, his parents already had a five-year-old daughter, Jean. His home environment was strongly Christian, but non-orthodox. "My upbringing was of low nonconformist Christians who felt that you led the Christian life in part by behaving in a Christian manner to everybody you met." When he was 12, his mother, Margery Lois (née Sutcliffe), died; his father died when he was 24. Of his coming out of the closet to his stepmother, Gladys McKellen, who was a member of the Religious Society of Friends, he said, "Not only was she not fazed, but as a member of a society which declared its indifference to people's sexuality years back, I think she was just glad for my sake that I wasn't lying anymore." 
 
McKellen attended Bolton School (boys division), of which he is still a supporter, attending regularly to talk to pupils. McKellen's acting career started at Bolton Little Theatre, of which he is now the patron. An early fascination with the theatre was encouraged by his parents, who took him on a family outing to Peter Pan at the Opera House in Manchester when he was three. 
When he was nine, his main Christmas present was a wood and bakelite, fold-away Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres, with cardboard scenery and wires to push on the cut-outs of Cinderella and of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. 
His sister took him to his first Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, by the amateurs of Wigan's Little Theatre, shortly followed by their Macbeth and Wigan High School for Girls' production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with music by Mendelssohn and with the role of Bottom played by Jean McKellen.  
 
He won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, when he was eighteen, where he developed an attraction to Derek Jacobi. He has characterised it as "a passion that was undeclared and unrequited". He later stated, on Inside the Actors Studio, that he talked to Jacobi about this and that Jacobi then confessed to have had a crush on McKellen as well.

Filmography Ian McKellen

The Good Liar - Drama
November 2019

The Good Liar

Drama Directed by: Bill CondonWith: Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Russell ToveyCareer con artist Roy Courtnay can hardly believe his luck when he meets well-to-do widow Betty McLeish online. As Betty opens her home and life to him, Roy is surprised to find himself caring about her, turning what should be a cut-and-dry swindle into the most treacherous tightrope walk of his... Read more...
Mr. Holmes - Drama, Comedy
July 2015

Mr. Holmes

Drama, Comedy Directed by: Bill CondonWith: Ian McKellen & Laura LinneyThe story is actually set in 1947, following a long-retired Holmes living in a Sussex village with his housekeeper and rising detective son. But then he finds himself haunted by an unsolved 50-year old case. Holmes memory isn't what it used to be, so he only remembers fragments of the case: a... Read more...
Flushed Away - Comedy, Animation (modern)
November 2006

Flushed Away

Comedy, Animation (modern) Directed by: Sam Fell & David BowersRoddy is a decidedly upper-crust "society rat" who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat, complete with two hamster butlers named Gilbert and Sullivan. When a common sewer rat named Syd comes spewing out of the sink and decides he's hit the jackpot, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by... Read more...

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