Sir Ian McKellen

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is an actor. He's made his name as one of our greatest living classical actors, the heir to Olivier, they've called him. But these days you're just as likely to see him starring in a Hollywood movie as on the West End stage. He's had no formal training. Brought up in a middle class family in Lancashire, he went to Cambridge, and then straight into the theatre. It wasn't long before he was attracting attention. He played a famous double bill of Richard the Second and Edward the Second, was greatly acclaimed as Macbeth at the RSC, and won a Tony as Salieri in Amadeus on Broadway.

Presenter1:02

For the last ten years he's worked increasingly in films. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Gods and Monsters, and has been seen more recently doing his bit for box office receipts as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. A more contented man, he feels, since he came out as gay fifteen years ago, he's pretty unromantic about his job. People like me are sloggers, he says. I'm not a born actor. I've learned how to do it. He is Ian McKellen. So if you slog at it, Ian, if it's like a trade or a craft, does that mean that it's a different one for the stage as for the cinema?

Sir Ian McKellen1:38

Now, I don't make much of a distinction actually. But I've had to learn how to do everything and and uh you have to learn how to m get your voice heard by in a large theatre. You know

Presenter1:46

You had to have the God-given talent in the first place, didn't you? What you're saying is you just sort of honed it.

Sir Ian McKellen1:51

I think the talent that I had was an enthusiasm to communicate r rather than uh an ability to act. I mean, some people like Kenneth Brown and Derek Jacob are just spring from the cradle, you know, born actors, able to do anything. But I

Presenter2:02

But we all think that's what you did.

Sir Ian McKellen2:04

No, no, no, I slogged away at it, I really did, and and had no intention of acting until I was well into um my my twenty undergraduate productions at Cambridge.

Sir Ian McKellen2:13

Uh when I s realized that everybody else around me, Trevenan and uh Jacoby, were going to go into the theatre, I thought I might as well join them. But uh uh then I went into it

Sir Ian McKellen2:22

Apprenticeship, you know, in at Coventry and Ipswich and Nottingham and Liverpool. I learned how to do it. And I still feel I'm doing that. And perhaps that's kept me fresh.

Presenter2:24

Two n

Presenter2:28

And perhaps that's kept refreshed. Except that now you're a film star. Do you see yourself as a British stage actor, or are you a Hollywood star? Because you're both.

Sir Ian McKellen2:37

Uh well, uh it it seems to have turned out that way, yes. I'm suddenly famous, which is is is odd.

Sir Ian McKellen2:43

Very odd.

Presenter2:44

Why is it on?

Sir Ian McKellen2:45

Well, you walk down the street and and strangers know who you are uh and that really hasn't happened to me before. And uh how they restore

Presenter2:51

And children in particular, presumably, because of Gandalf in Lord of the Reigns.

Sir Ian McKellen2:55

I know. I've suddenly got millions of of uh god-grandchildren. Is is there such a thing?

Sir Ian McKellen3:01

Grand godchildren, I don't know. But they're they're lovely.

Presenter3:01

Crown of gold.

Presenter3:04

What do they say when they come up?

Sir Ian McKellen3:06

They they don't they just stand in front of me and smile, and um then when I start talking and uh I think they're a bit alarmed that I don't quite sound like Gandalf, but if I if I do a little bit of that, then their eyes go wider and wider. It's it's thrilling being uh uh taken into into their lives a little bit.

Presenter3:22

But you always enjoy all of that. You enjoy this this it's a kind of different style of career of the past six years. Do you nevertheless really, you know, when when it comes down to brass tax, do you miss the live audience?

Sir Ian McKellen3:35

Well, I must like showing off, mustn't I? But I've always thought my acting was at the service of the material that we were presenting, you know, the the playwright, the script, and so I don't think of myself as the star. So that's

Sir Ian McKellen3:48

is what connects my work in cinema and and my work in theatre. Audiences can be guaranteed if they come and see me act they may not like what I do, but the material that I'm dealing with uh is well worth anyone's time and money.

Presenter4:00

This is a desert island we're casting you away on. What's the first one you've got?

Sir Ian McKellen4:03

The first time you've been. And thank you for the opportunity to to be here. And I'm going to start with some uh piano music because uh that's always been a big part of my life. My my father played the piano and um

Presenter4:05

I'm sorry.

Sir Ian McKellen4:15

My earliest memory is trying to get to sleep in Wigan while my father below was hammering out Schopa. But this isn't Schopper, this is Vladimir Horowitz, who I heard play this little encore piece that he used to do to lucky audiences, and uh it will surprise people who've never heard it before.

Presenter5:03

Great piece. The Vladimir Horovitz version of Suze's The Stars and Stripes Forever. I bet your dad didn't play that at home, Wiggit.

Sir Ian McKellen5:09

He said they didn't know.

Presenter5:11

But what did your father play on this piano? This was Wigan, wartime.

Sir Ian McKellen5:15

Yes, he played classical uh piano and my sister Jean and I, who was five years older, were taught to play piano and I I hated it. And when we moved from Wigan uh and I was asked what I thought about moving to Bolton, all of eight miles away, I said, Well, it was fine with me as long as I could stop going to piano classes. Of course I've regretted it ever since.

Presenter5:32

Yeah.

Presenter5:34

Of course.

Sir Ian McKellen5:35

Yeah.

Presenter5:36

Neat, tidy, middle class home. What did your dad do?

Sir Ian McKellen5:40

Yet a home full of love. My father was the borough engineer of Wigan, and and later Bolton. My mother didn't work. We went to church on Sundays and Sunday school and walked to school, uh s small towns, you know, and uh

Sir Ian McKellen5:54

had a r a really happy childhood until my mother died when I was twelve years old and

Presenter5:57

Thank you to my mother.

Sir Ian McKellen5:59

It that part of my life came to an end.

Presenter6:02

Oh, I didn't realise that. What time tour?

Sir Ian McKellen6:03

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen6:04

She had breast cancer.

Sir Ian McKellen6:06

And my father remarried about two years later, luckily for him, to Gladys, who was my oldest surviving relative, ninety six years old. She'd be listening to us.

Sir Ian McKellen6:16

Uh up in the Lake District, where I go and visit her very often.

Presenter6:19

Hmm.

Presenter6:21

And what about as a child? Were you taken to the theatre, did you?

Sir Ian McKellen6:24

Yes. What did you see? My mother and father loved the theatre and and rarely the cinema. And we went to the local repertoire company, you know, a different play every week.

Presenter6:25

What did you see?

Sir Ian McKellen6:33

and went to Manchester, the nearest big town, where I saw the big actors, John Gielgood, and Sybil Thorndyke, Edith Evans.

Sir Ian McKellen6:40

And I was very lucky that in bolt

Sir Ian McKellen6:43

When I was in my early teens, my father knowing the the manager of the Grand Theatre there, um, I was allowed to go backstage.

Sir Ian McKellen6:50

And so throughout my formative years, you know, whi whether other people were discovering uh sex, I was discovering the theatre at first hand, professional theatre, so'cause I I could meet these comedians and tumblers and acrobats and singers and and uh uh go into their dressing rooms even and talk to them, and then go and watch them out front. And so I began to learn how it was done and and understand a little bit of the magic of that.

Sir Ian McKellen7:15

Line that you cross from the dusty wings into the bright lights on stage. And so.

Sir Ian McKellen7:20

My fate was sealed then, although I didn't realize it.

Presenter7:22

You didn't I was gonna say, you didn't realize it, or did you think, you know, I could do this or I'd like to do this or?

Sir Ian McKellen7:28

I thought I couldn't do it, so although if if a grown up bored me by asking that question what you going to do when you grow up, I always said an actor, because I thought it would shut them up.

Sir Ian McKellen7:37

It horrified them. Um I didn't really mean it. I I I I thought it was much more likely that I'd end up teaching or

Presenter7:43

But was that because you thought, you know, you couldn't be an actor, it wasn't a proper job, it was just a job.

Sir Ian McKellen7:47

Oh no, not that it wasn't a proper job, but nor that m my parents wouldn't approve that. They they they loved the theatre and um

Sir Ian McKellen7:54

When my mother died, her sister, my aunt, told me that she'd said if Ian did become an actor, and I was twelve at the time, she would be happy because she thought actors brought a lot of joy.

Sir Ian McKellen8:05

to other people, which is what I've held on to ever since, and is is my main intention of my professional life.

Sir Ian McKellen8:13

And uh no, it was that I thought I wouldn't be good enough, because I'd seen these great actors, and uh it took me an awful long time to convince myself I had any right to step onto stage professionally.

Presenter8:25

Equal number two.

Sir Ian McKellen8:27

Wilson Moore, American Music. Samuel Barber has a daggio for strings, and I expect on this desert island I'd like to indulge my melancholic mood occasionally, and this will certainly help.

Presenter9:38

Part of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Simon, is powerful stuff, isn't it?

Presenter9:46

Nineteen fifties, nineteen forties, nineteen fifties in Northern England w would not have been a a place or a time when you could have said to anyone, Excuse me, I think I'm gay, would it?

Presenter9:57

Uh

Sir Ian McKellen9:57

If that word were invented or used to have that meaning, no.

Presenter9:57

And it's

Presenter9:59

or used in

Presenter10:01

But it I mean, presumably it was a secret and of course you would have known it was an illegal secret in in a sense.

Sir Ian McKellen10:07

It certainly was. It was illegal for two men to make love until the middle of the nineteen sixties.

Sir Ian McKellen10:13

Ah, so I broke the law?

Sir Ian McKellen10:15

by making love. That won't do. That's a dreadful thing. Makes me very, very angry still. So uh it took me a long time and it wasn't until after Cambridge, or after university, that I actually had a f full blown love affair and I understood myself and and was and was was happy about it.

Presenter10:30

Did you tell your father?

Sir Ian McKellen10:31

No, I didn't tell my father. There was no point of reference. I I couldn't have reassured uh my father that it was all right to be gay, because I I couldn't point to anybody I knew who was gay apart from Oscar Wilde, and he came to a rather sticky, unfortunate end, you know, and uh it was very, very difficult. And and what's

Speaker 110:41

Cool.

Speaker 110:45

Yeah.

Speaker 110:47

Then what's

Sir Ian McKellen10:48

good about the present situation that there are plenty of books that people can refer to and find them in public libraries and reassure people that there's nothing odd about being gay and um

Speaker 110:52

Happy.

Sir Ian McKellen10:58

I dare say there's somebody listening to this programme now who might be slightly reassured to hear somebody say that.

Presenter11:02

The hell.

Presenter11:03

But you were obviously working very hard at being you know, you were terribly sort of well behaved, reliable, responsible. That's why he became head boy, isn't it? You reading about you, it seems to me that you were

Presenter11:15

Ian

Sir Ian McKellen11:16

Yes, and there was a tension there between being head boy and and being an actor at school and winning prizes and getting a scholarship to Cambridge. Already there was a a public life, but it wasn't about the truth of only about

Sir Ian McKellen11:32

It's part of the truth.

Sir Ian McKellen11:34

And so I had a secret.

Sir Ian McKellen11:37

And that's one of the reasons I became an actor. Because I didn't like having the secret, I wanted to shout it.

Sir Ian McKellen11:42

From the highest hill, in a way that I couldn't express them, I felt in real life. I had to save it for.

Sir Ian McKellen11:50

Uh the theatre. But that's real life too uh in a sense.

Presenter11:55

Record number three.

Sir Ian McKellen11:56

are some Beethoven and part of one of the late quartets, which merit listening to over and over and over again, and so assuming that I'm going to be on your island, or my island, for some time, I'll never get tired of this.

Speaker 212:14

Uh

Presenter13:09

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Late Quartet, number thirteen in B-flat, opus 130, played by the Lindsay String Quartet. So Cambridge Ian McKellen was crucial really in your decision to go into the theatre because you met so many other talented people and whether it was Trevor Nunn or Derek Jacobi or Margaret Drabble, I think you acted with, you In the end you felt you could do this. What about accent? Did you perceive that as a as a deterrent to your possible success in the theatre? Because people were speaking rather like John Gilgorge at the time.

Sir Ian McKellen13:41

Yeah, they were. And uh I think I was the last generation of people who thought that they ought to to to get rid of their accent, have it taken out. Though as you can hear I didn't really succeed. But at school I used to have two accents. W we spoke like this at home, you know, sort of uh uh Lancashire but at school you really talk like that, you know. So so I'd already got the idea that um the way you sounded affected people. And when I went to Cambridge

Sir Ian McKellen14:10

grammar schoolboy on a scholarship, and met all these frightfully proper upper class public schoolboys who mocked me because I couldn't say one, I could only say one.

Sir Ian McKellen14:19

I did my best to get rid of my accent. Uh that as much as anything. But then, you know, I I thought if you're ever going to play Hamlet you you've you've got to have a posh accent, but Albert Finney proved me wrong. And he's a little bit older than me, um born and brought up in Salford, quite close to Bothum where I was, but he kept his accent, Alan Bates kept his, and Tom Courtney kept his.

Presenter14:40

Why did they manage it and you didn't?

Sir Ian McKellen14:41

Well, I think they put a little bit more confidence in themselves, probably, than I had.

Presenter14:46

Hm. And but it's almost as if you ceased to be yourself. You said before now, you know, that you you were someone who used to be in McKellen but became an actor. Yes, yes, perfect.

Sir Ian McKellen14:49

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen14:56

Yeah.

Presenter14:56

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen14:56

puts it rather nicely. And uh these days w well when uh uh young people go to drama schools they're encouraged to keep their native accent and told that it's a precious thing, it's their culture, it's everything about themselves. Don't lose it, if keep hold hold on to it and use it as often as you can and certainly in everyday life, but be able to speak in received pronunciation. And so I I often go back to the north professionally and and speak u use m what I can remember of my native accent and and enjoy it. And I think if ever I retire I shall just stop speaking like I have been speaking and and get back to what I probably really should sound like. What's wrong with sounding as if you're from Wigan or Bolton, you know.

Presenter15:36

So it's all one big act, is it? It is. But all the world's a stage, you know.

Sir Ian McKellen15:38

It is. But all the world's a stage, you know, and uh all the men and women merely play it.

Presenter15:44

Record number four.

Sir Ian McKellen15:45

Well, here's a player. I I heard Ethel Merman sing this uh on the stage at uh the Palladium uh late in her career, but I wish I'd heard her sing it on Broadway in um Gypsy.

Sir Ian McKellen15:58

It's the song Rose's turn at the climax of the story when she finally takes control of the whole musical. And the words abide Stephen Sondheim, and Sondheim has to be here somewhere, so here he is.

Speaker 116:08

Someone tell me when is it my turn? Don't I get a dream for myself? Start now, it's gonna be my turn. Gateway world, get off of my runway. Start now, I got a thousand. This time, boys, I'm taking them out.

Speaker 216:21

Yeah.

Speaker 116:23

Everything is coming.

Speaker 116:28

Everything's coming up closer.

Speaker 116:33

Everything's carving up roses this time.

Speaker 216:35

Uh

Presenter16:38

Epelmohan and Rose's Turn from Gypsy. So you never had any formal training in the theatre, Ian McKellen. You you put yourself through a kind of apprenticeship, but uh you did for that I think the first ten years or so not do any television, not do any film. You were sort of quite high-minded about it almost. I'm going to say that.

Sir Ian McKellen16:56

Not that there was a lot of work of that sort offered me, I have to say, but uh a little bit, and and and and offers to work in London, which I turned down because, yes, I felt I needed an apprenticeship. And heavens above, I was really enjoying myself in in uh those regional repertory companies doing maybe twenty plays a year, you know, of all sorts.

Sir Ian McKellen17:15

particularly enjoying what you don't always feel in London, that you really belong to the community.

Presenter17:20

But at what point in all of this did you decide that your apprenticeship was over?

Sir Ian McKellen17:25

I honestly don't think I've uh stopped.

Presenter17:28

No, it's it's

Sir Ian McKellen17:28

I knew that. No, it's it's true, and it's what keeps me going. If I if I thought I could do it.

Sir Ian McKellen17:34

And when I got knighted, you know, and I've talked to other people who've been knighted, they think, Oh, that's it, I've done it, I needn't bother now.

Sir Ian McKellen17:43

Dangerous thing, knighthoods. But what certainly established me in the public's mind, I think, was Richard the Second and Edward the Second for the the old Touring Prospect Theatre. And I played those on adjacent nights at the Edinburgh Festival and then in London for two seasons and then on television and at the end of that

Sir Ian McKellen18:01

People knew who I was.

Presenter18:03

And that had taken, what, some ten years or so, I think. Yeah, about that, perhaps a little bit less.

Sir Ian McKellen18:05

Yeah, about that. Perhaps a little bit less. Yeah.

Presenter18:07

Yeah. And then you did the the the Macbeth I mentioned in the in my introduction there, the RSC opposite Judy Dench, didn't you? Now, you were said it was said at some point, you must have said it, that you based your Macbeth to some extent on on JFK, that this is sometimes what you did take a public figure and and learn through that person how this character might

Sir Ian McKellen18:31

Yes, we d uh it was uh a clever note of of clever Trevor Nunn, uh our director, who I think I'd probably said, Oh, uh the the Macbeths, uh it's it's Richard Nixon, isn't it? You know. No, he said it's not Nixon, no, no, no, it's Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy he Macbeth and his lady are are are the Kennedys. Everybody loves them. They're glamorous, they're successful, they've got everything they could possibly want in life, but they want more.

Sir Ian McKellen18:55

And then they do what of course the Kennedys themselves didn't do. And then they killed the king. And then all everything went wrong.

Presenter19:03

That I can see. But elsewhere I've read that you said that you based Coriolanus, a later Coriolanus, I think the one you were mentioning, on John McEnroe. Now, give me this

Sir Ian McKellen19:13

He leant over at a at a reception in the night and said, What is this about me being the basis of your acting? Well, I I had to explain it wasn't quite like that, but it Coriolis is a great athlete, he's a great warrior.

Sir Ian McKellen19:25

But he cannot stand praise.

Sir Ian McKellen19:29

There's tragedy really.

Sir Ian McKellen19:30

He knows he's the best, so he doesn't need anybody else to tell him, thank you very much.

Sir Ian McKellen19:34

And so when he goes out into the marketplace and has to show his stripes, his wounds to get the people's votes, he turns on them with that dreadful, dreadful arrogance that you spotted in John McEnray when he was a kid, because he knew he was best and he didn't want anybody to to correct him or or or even praise him. And I I I thought that arrogance was something that I could use and I I imitated him a little bit on the battlefield. I use a few of his jumps and so on.

Presenter20:02

Equipment number five.

Sir Ian McKellen20:04

Oh, another diva, Lena Horne, and when I saw her on Broadway in The Lady in Her Music, she astonished me by singing her hit song Stormy Weather toward the end of the first half, and I thought, Well, that's crazy You you you you saved the best of the last. And when she got to the end of the concert

Sir Ian McKellen20:21

which would have been absolutely astonishing. She uh she repeated herself and uh this is what she said.

Presenter20:29

I'm

Presenter20:30

I'm still.

Presenter20:32

Finding

Presenter20:35

uh things to to think about when I when I sing this. It's taken me a lot of years to grow into it.

Presenter20:46

Uh

Presenter20:50

I walk around.

Presenter20:54

I am heavy-hearted sometimes. Lena Horne and Stormy Weather from The Lady and Her Music, live on Broadway. You didn't um go public in, as you've said, about your homosexuality until you were nearly fifty, and then you did it on on a radio discussion programme. It it seemed sort of all of a sudden, why you know, why did you suddenly take this decision? Which is a large decision.

Sir Ian McKellen21:11

Bit

Sir Ian McKellen21:18

I'd just split with a boyfriend of long standing, and the facts of our relationship was that had I come out uh whilst we were living together, he would have been even more Ian McKellen's boyfriend than he already was, and so we we kept rather quiet publicly about uh that. But when we split up, uh I began to think

Sir Ian McKellen21:38

for the first time in my life really seriously about it out

Sir Ian McKellen21:41

Gabe

Sir Ian McKellen21:43

Politics had passed me by, gay liberation. I was too busy having a career, you know, I really wasn't involved with the real world.

Speaker 121:47

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen21:49

And I began to wonder how and and when uh it would be appropriate to just complete the coming out journey, because ev all my friends knew, or any employer knew, employees knew. I hadn't talked to everybody in my uh blood family, but I I hadn't talked about it publicly, and if you're in public life that's a little bit of extra bit of the coming out journey you have to do.

Speaker 122:02

Yeah.

Presenter22:03

Yeah.

Presenter22:07

That question.

Presenter22:09

But did it take courage?

Sir Ian McKellen22:11

No, it didn't. It it it it took um uh a very nasty law that the Thatcher Government was proposing to put through called uh section twenty eight, still on the statute books, which um

Sir Ian McKellen22:23

I didn't approve of because it was about me and uh and I took it very personally and and in joining with the many thousands of people, gay and straight, who who objected to it publicly, uh it was all too easy in the discussion programme to say, Look, what y you're talking about me, not them. I I'm one of these dreadful people who the world has to be protected from, ironically, and uh

Speaker 122:37

Hmm.

Sir Ian McKellen22:43

And then I discovered that suddenly life made total sense because there were a lot of missionaries in our family, people who stood up

Sir Ian McKellen22:55

And perhaps declared unpopular things and said them out loud.

Sir Ian McKellen23:00

My family, since I came out, have been extremely supportive. I think they recognize, oh, he really is a McKellen after all, you know. He's now himself.

Presenter23:08

So although you'd anticipated doing this, there was a huge sense of release, obviously, from what you say.

Sir Ian McKellen23:14

Don't I mean

Presenter23:15

Unan unanticipated sense of reason.

Sir Ian McKellen23:17

Oh, I I hadn't realized what a dreadful, dreadful millstone round my neck. And when people then said

Sir Ian McKellen23:26

You know, Ian, you're acting better than you used to. I said, well, of course, of course, because I'm now myself. I'm not hiding anything.

Sir Ian McKellen23:35

In many ways the world seems to me not to be as good a place as it used to be, but in this regard it's better.

Presenter23:39

Is it a bit of a downside, though, that you then have to carry the public conch?

Presenter23:44

Every time anybody wants to interview anybody, we'll bring up Ian McCallum.

Sir Ian McKellen23:46

Well I know that.

Sir Ian McKellen23:48

The late Nigel Hawthorne, who who uh and his partner used to say that and and and regretted that it was publicly, eventually known that that they'd been living together very happily for years.

Sir Ian McKellen23:58

as gay men, Nigel said to me, Ian, I can't come out. You see, Trevor and I um um o open the the the Fate at the Vicarage every year, and if the Vicar knew if the Vicar knew that we were gay

Sir Ian McKellen24:11

Well

Sir Ian McKellen24:13

What did the vicar think about two middle aged gentlemen who'd been living together for twenty years in the village? You see how ridiculous it is. Nigel regretted that the world knew he was going because he had

Sir Ian McKellen24:25

On occasions like this and many others he he would be asked about it, and and he felt it was something very private and personal he didn't want to talk about it. And I said, You don't have to talk about it.

Sir Ian McKellen24:34

Paul Schofield, I don't think, ever gives interviews. We don't know anything about Paul Schofield's private life. He's a straight man. You're a gay man. You don't have to talk about it. But don't lie about it. That's the point.

Presenter24:45

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sir Ian McKellen24:46

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen24:47

Well, slightly related to what we're talking about. Here's a political song, but it belongs to show business, as the introduction makes clear. Another wonderful performer, Nina Simone, singing Mississippi Godam.

Speaker 225:00

This is a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet.

Speaker 225:11

Hound dogs on my trail, school children sitting in jail, black cat cross my path, I think every day's gonna be my last.

Speaker 225:26

Yeah.

Presenter25:26

Nina Simone and Mississippi Goddamn. I wanted to ask you just a bit more about making the transition into film, Ian, because in a way, although you'd done lots of films before, it seems to have been when you did Richard III six years ago that you sort of finally really went big time into film. It was your idea and you started it. Apparently before that you'd always felt that the people gathered on the other side of the camera were kind of a gin-you're not for you in some way.

Sir Ian McKellen25:57

Yeah, it uh it used to be uh very unnerving to uh uh come to your big moment when the camera is looking exclusively at you.

Sir Ian McKellen26:06

you're having to act and you realize that behind the camera there there may be twenty or thirty people all peering at you with uh

Sir Ian McKellen26:14

with aggression, I used to think, until I realized that they were all there to help. They were looking you know, the wig person was looking at the wig, the makeup person was looking at the makeup, the cameraman was looking through the camera and everything was there to support and and not to not to criticize.

Sir Ian McKellen26:29

But it did take me a long time to discover that, and and when I was decided to to try and bring Richard Eyre's production of Richard the Third from the Royal National Theatre to the cinema and an even larger audience than than had seen it on the World Tour that we went on,

Sir Ian McKellen26:43

during which I wrote the screenplay.

Sir Ian McKellen26:46

I wasn't confident I could do it. I'd never written a screenplay before, nor had I really played a part as demanding responsibilities as that. I thought I'd better put myself through a course of how to act on film. And I did about ten movies and television films. And people thought, what are you doing in? Why are you playing all these little parts? Well, I was learning how to do the job. And a film apprenticeship in my late 50s. And the experience gradually gave me the confidence to be in front of the camera.

Speaker 126:58

I think that's the one you have.

Presenter27:24

Because you really did use the camera in the middle.

Sir Ian McKellen27:26

Treated the camera as a friend. Yes, and Richard has to do that. He he he speaks his soliloquies directly to the camera.

Presenter27:28

D here.

Presenter27:31

Yeah. But but it was I mean, the the cinema is so much bigger in the making, isn't it, than the theatre? And this was your baby. I can just imagine you arriving on set and you've got a kind of hundred extras and uniforms and dogs and horses and horses and trains. Hitler's sort of nineteen thirties steam trains.

Sir Ian McKellen27:43

Beautiful.

Sir Ian McKellen27:45

And horses and trains.

Sir Ian McKellen27:49

That's right, yes.

Presenter27:50

But a stunning experience. I mean, we should explain that you played Richard A as Hitler, as it were, in this sort of bloody rise to power.

Sir Ian McKellen27:56

Yes, we had that concept that you could

Sir Ian McKellen27:59

take the mediaeval king and put him a in a modernish setting uh and and thereby explain what everybody did for a living, who was in the church, who was in the army, what s rank and what was their status and so on. That's all much easier to

Sir Ian McKellen28:11

understand if as if if people aren't all wearing the same doublet and hose and and um you know

Presenter28:15

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen28:16

You know, floppy tights and floppy hats.

Presenter28:20

But is it, do you think, to date your best bit of celluloid, or would you cite, you know, Gods and Monsters in which you played James Whale, who was a man, you know, quite akin to yourself?

Sir Ian McKellen28:32

Yes, that that was a wonderful, wonderful part. And one of the problems about being in the film industry, which is an international business, because um you can't make your money back on a movie if it's only seen in your own country. It has to go abroad.

Sir Ian McKellen28:47

And uh often what happens is that English actors turn themselves into Airsatz American actors. So wasn't that wonderful that there I was making a Hollywood movie, Gods and Monsters, and the leading part was an Englishman. James Whale, the the man who directed the the first Frankenstein movies, who was openly gay in the nineteen fifties in Hollywood. So um yeah, a wonderful script uh and and an excellent, excellent film. And Gandalf faint half bad.

Sir Ian McKellen29:12

Uh

Presenter29:12

Right on.

Sir Ian McKellen29:13

Code numbers But I'm not here to speak well of myself.

Presenter29:16

Oh no.

Sir Ian McKellen29:18

I'm here to raise. Uh

Presenter29:20

But you've never heard?

Sir Ian McKellen29:21

Yeah. It seems that on this island it would be good, wouldn't it, not just to have something that I already know, but to have uh to delve into something that I don't know. And I haven't ever listened to wittingly to anything that Harrison Bertussel wrote. I would love to uh therefore take quite a lot of his music, and we're going to take uh Harrison's clocks.

Presenter29:42

which is, I can tell you, a piece that he wrote about four years ago, and actually it's in celebration of the clockmaker John Harrison.

Presenter29:51

on whom the book Longitude was based.

Sir Ian McKellen29:54

Excellent.

Presenter30:52

Joanna McGregor playing part of Clock One from Harrison Burtwhistle's Harrison's Clocks. Did it hit the right spot?

Presenter31:00

Throw on you, huh?

Sir Ian McKellen31:01

Well, I you know, I don't um do an awful lot of the things that I feel I ought to do with my life. You know, I don't go to museums often enough, I don't read enough, I d I don't know uh enough foreign languages and and and I don't think enough and uh I don't hear enough music and um

Sir Ian McKellen31:18

So yes, I I'll get used to that and hum it all over the island.

Presenter31:23

But you do more of the things you just mentioned these days because you work less, don't you?

Sir Ian McKellen31:28

I do. It's a wonderful thing to do. Well, you've still got a lot of energy.

Sir Ian McKellen31:31

To say, right, that's it. No, I'm not taking engagements. I'm going to be at home. I'm going to see my friends. I'm going to make some new friends. I'm going to go.

Presenter31:39

Although you're heavy into rehearsal at the moment for Strindberg's Dance of Death, I mean you

Sir Ian McKellen31:42

Yes, and I don't mind doing that because I enjoyed doing it so much on Broadway and it it'll be a nice change from a lot of movies I've been doing recently.

Presenter31:50

So a desert island has no appeal for you whatsoever, eh?

Sir Ian McKellen31:54

No, I I think it might because because uh although I at the moment live by myself, solitude is a demanding but rewarding state and you can uh you know think thoughts that uh affect the rest of your life which if you're too busy you you you miss.

Presenter32:10

Tell me about your last record.

Sir Ian McKellen32:11

I'll be dancing every so often, I'm sure, on my own. And and this is uh this is a

Sir Ian McKellen32:17

A track that I danced to more than any other, I think, because they played at my local uh gay um b bar uh in in the East End, uh The White Swan.

Presenter32:25

They played everybody's local game.

Sir Ian McKellen32:26

Oh, do they? I didn't know that. Well, when the lights uh just uh the lights are dimming before being turned on far too brightly, uh this is what they play uh and and uh I like s singing along to it and and dancing to it.

Presenter32:39

Night is young and the music's

Presenter32:43

With a bit of rock music, everything's fine, during the roof for the dance.

Presenter32:52

And when you get the chance, you are the dancing queen, young and sweet.

Speaker 233:04

Uh

Presenter33:04

Uh Uh

Speaker 233:04

Uh Uh

Presenter33:06

Abba and Dancing Queen. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take in?

Sir Ian McKellen33:13

Dancing Queen ABBA I've only just realised, of course, ABBA being Swedish and Dance of Death being Strimberg.

Speaker 233:19

And

Sir Ian McKellen33:26

I think Leena Horn perhaps in stormy weather because it'll remind me of all those wonderful times I've had in the theatre as an audience and there'll be nobody to watch me perform so uh it'll be good for me to think more modestly.

Presenter33:34

Yeah.

Presenter33:40

And what about your book? You've got the Bible, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare.

Sir Ian McKellen33:44

a dictionary, I think, of of of plants and and and trees and and flowers in in the hope that I could identify what was around me.

Presenter33:52

And what about your luck?

Sir Ian McKellen33:53

Is it too late for me to learn how to play the piano?

Sir Ian McKellen33:56

Not at all. So what about a grand piano?

Presenter33:59

A grand piano.

Sir Ian McKellen34:00

Hmm.

Presenter34:01

Ian McKellen. Sir, Ian, I'm allowed to put the Sir in at this point.

Sir Ian McKellen34:04

Yeah.

Presenter34:05

Yeah.

Sir Ian McKellen34:05

Uh

Presenter34:05

Uh

Presenter34:06

Sir Ian MacKellan, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter34:18

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.