--- title: 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen | TIME description: The screen and stage actor discusses Gandolf, The Vatican and more canonical: https://time.com/video/cc4j5llo/ og:title: 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen og:description: The screen and stage actor discusses Gandolf, The Vatican and more og:url: https://time.com/video/cc4j5llo/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/cc4j5llo/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen twitter:description: The screen and stage actor discusses Gandolf, The Vatican and more twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/cc4j5llo/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Sir Ian McKellen](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cc4j5llo.m3u8) (6:41)  _Published 2012-12-12. The screen and stage actor discusses Gandolf, The Vatican and more_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:29 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions for Actor Jim Parsons](/video/JCqWVw6O/) ### 10 Questions for Actor Jim Parsons [10 Questions for Terry McMillan](/video/1veMXoyB/) ### 10 Questions for Terry McMillan [10 Questions with Ewan McGregor](/video/I7oM93Cz/) ### 10 Questions with Ewan McGregor --- ## Transcript Sir Ian McKellen is one of those actors who somehow managed to have a very storied and successful career in theater, while also creating some indelible genre picture roles in the X Men and Lord of the Rings movies. We're here to talk about his most recent trip to Middle Earth with The Hobbit. Ian, thank you very much for jointing us. Pleasure. You asked me to find the fourteenth member of this company and I have chosen Mr. Baggins. So you're playing Gandalf again, except now you're older and Gandalf is younger. Was that a challenge? How did you approach that? Well, I wouldn't get too excited about that, he's seven thousand years old and sixty years Sure that makes no difference really. It's basically the same Gandalf the Gray. Who I guess is everyone's favorite. Certainly mine and Peter Jackson's. Rather than Gandalf the White, who you also saw in Lord of the Rings. This is, this is the Gandalf who likes to smoke and drink and party with the hobbits, rather than the driven commander who's gonna save the world. He's just a Gandalf you relate to more. Yes, yeah, he's a little bit more humane, really. You wrote in your blog that the difference between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, now, is that Peter Jackson wears shoes. Has fame gone to his head? Well he's 12 years older. He's now hugely successful and famous. But his attitude affirming is always as it was, but, but the toys he's got to play with, and the technology that he's helped to develop, is what marks the difference, I think, between now and then. If Tolkien were alive today, given that he was kind of an avowed Catholic. And there is some sort of religious themes that run through the book. Would you have questions for him? What would you ask him? Well, I don't know. I think it's he is over time gone by, would he still be smoking today? I don't know. Would he still be lecturing in Oxford rather than one of the newer universities. Would he be the sort of Catholic who wouldn't understand why someone like me would be openly gay and, and think myself God's creature as he was? I don't know. It's a difficult sort of question to answer, that. Do you have any questions about Gandalf? I would like to have seen Gandalf waking up in the morning, what did he wear to sleep in, his clothes? God he must have stunk. Did he wash, nobody abloots in Middle earth. Nobody takes, nobody goes to, has a pee, and I, I, I wanted to have a shot of Gandalf relieving himself against some trees. That's true of all movies, though. What? And, nobody takes a pee in any movies. What? Astonishing, isn't it, why, why is that? I mean it's a big part of my life. You are known for your Shakespeare, is he your favorite playwright? Do you have another that you. You love? Yeah, well of all, of all writers Shakespeare is the most difficult and the most rewarding, and I know that if Shakespeare's working well on stage, the audience have a potentially life changing experience and to be in the middle of that and conducting it even. Cinema is comparatively dead. I mean, you might literally be dead, and still be giving a wonderful performance. [ LAUGH ] Is there an act, a playwright you just don't wanna do, that you just don't like? Agatha Christie. I, I've done a couple of her plays. Misery, rubbish. [ LAUGH ] No sense of what human beings are at all. It's like being in a crossroads, playing in a crossroads. Pretty much since you came out in 88, you've been an outspoken advocate for gay rights. How much of that battle do you feel has been won? Well, in my country, almost entirely, the outstanding law that needs to be established is that anyone who wants to get married can do, re, regardless of the gender of their partner. So, once that's agreed and all political parties are in favor of it now, there will be a level playing field and equality will have been achieved under the law. Now, equality and society as a whole was another matter. What bothers me most is, is those, usually men, remnants of the old patriarchal system who think you can only be a man if you have sex with a woman as if that sort of defines who you are. And then they decide not to have sex themselves and they get elected to the Vatican top of the civil service there and say, talk about things that they, of which they have no experience. It's, it's odd, isn't it? And only if it weren't so farcical I worry that people take those old attitudes seriously. When you go and talk to schools, who do you mostly feel you're addressing? Are you addressing the young people in the audience whose sexuality is emerging or you're addressing the people who are scared of homosexuality and are likely to bully. Well all of them actually. Now, initially, they may want to all catch a glimpse of Gandalf or there. Or Magneto let's be fair. Yes, or Magneto. But I just talk about what it was like growing up when, when I was at school. And how there was absolute total silence. And I felt alone and, if not suicidal. I, just utterly bewildered and at odds with society. And I was very lucky that I didn't turn against society, really. [ SOUND ] So it it's an absolute privilege and there was, there was a moment when after I talked for twenty minutes and answered questions. And I say you can ask me about anything. I talked about Gandalf, Magneto, acting, my private life, just go ahead. And this little girl sitting in the front row. 13, she must have been. Yes, have you got a, a boyfriend? And she sort of titters around the room. I said, you know, I don't at the moment. And 1300 kids went [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] So that's the most fulfilling part of my life. 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