Top 121 Ian Mckellen Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Ian Mckellen Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

I don't think many people will re-read 'The Da Vinci Co

I don’t think many people will re-read ‘The Da Vinci Code.’
Ian Mckellen
There’s no sex in Middle Earth.
Ian Mckellen
I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn’t know they had got it, and it went on the rampage.
Ian Mckellen
It is really, really wonderful that in your old age you are protected by specialists who understand your problems and sort them out for you. Well, isn’t that what we all need?
Ian Mckellen
I live for the text. It’s my job.
Ian Mckellen
I’m not someone who wears shades all the time and ducks into a darkened car in case I’m recognized – that would be absolute misery.
Ian Mckellen
What I particularly like about Broadway is the camaraderie and the friendship of other people in other shows. Everybody knows you’re opening and cares about you. There’s a real village atmosphere.
Ian Mckellen
One thing Middle-earth is short on is the feminine.
Ian Mckellen
When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that – in real life – I wasn’t doing.
Ian Mckellen
It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier.
Ian Mckellen
The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they’re doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.
Ian Mckellen
Before I ever acted as an amateur – which I did a great deal at school and at university – I used to go to the theater with my parents in the north of England, where I was born and brought up… Theater of all sorts.
Ian Mckellen
Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don’t get released, is the fact.
Ian Mckellen
I love working in New York.
Ian Mckellen
Anyone in public life who comes out, comes out primarily for themselves, and their life is immediately improved. That’s what happened to me.
Ian Mckellen
I always walk up the escalator on the Tube, and I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and that’s good exercise, but you need more than that.
Ian Mckellen
My ambition is to get better as an actor.
Ian Mckellen
On the whole, actors shout when they don’t know what they’re doing, trying to make an impact.
Ian Mckellen
When I appeared in ‘Coronation Street,’ I lived in Manchester and enjoyed it very much.
Ian Mckellen
When I’ve been asked what should be on my gravestone, I’ve said: ‘Here lies Gandalf. He came out.’ Two big achievements.
Ian Mckellen
If I was a star, it would be difficult to go off and do ‘Coronation Street.’ So I guess I’m not a star.
Ian Mckellen
The conventional wisdom is that if you are gay, you cannot play the romantic straight lead in a movie.
Ian Mckellen
Doing some of the ‘Lord Of The Rings’ press junkets got a bit claustrophobic.
Ian Mckellen
‘King Lear,’ I’ve been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime… to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that’s challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
Ian Mckellen
There’s lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.
Ian Mckellen
I have lots of fans, they are mostly under the age of 12, boys and girls.
Ian Mckellen
I’m not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.
Ian Mckellen
There’s something wholesome about the theatre.
Ian Mckellen
If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don’t need to draw attention to yourself. It’s all laid out for you.
Ian Mckellen
In the U.K. there is still work to be done, particularly in schools, stopping the homophobic bullies in the playground and introducing unbiased discussion on gay issues in the classroom.
Ian Mckellen
Until I came out, my acting was all about disguise, and thereafter it became about telling the truth.
Ian Mckellen
Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting fo

Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: ‘I’m waiting to win the lottery. I’m waiting to fall in love’. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.
Ian Mckellen
I learned that coming out was crucial to self-esteem.
Ian Mckellen
I don’t have Gandalf the White’s certainty about everything.
Ian Mckellen
The wonderful thing about modern medicine is that so many of these complaints that used to signify old age and decline can be coped with.
Ian Mckellen
What’s nice for me, having identified myself for years as being rather shy, is now, wherever I am, in public, there tends to be a friendly face who’s pleased to see me, and I like that.
Ian Mckellen
No actor wants to play to an empty house.
Ian Mckellen
The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of ‘The Hobbit,’ is of a kid’s adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted.
Ian Mckellen
When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I’d been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.
Ian Mckellen
I’m the sort of person who doesn’t write in ink. I only write in pencil, so it can be rubbed out.
Ian Mckellen
I’ve always had very catholic tastes.
Ian Mckellen
It’s easier to go from theatre to film than the other way round. In film you’re absolutely loved and cossetted and cared for. In film your director makes your performance. In theatre you’re carrying it all.
Ian Mckellen
I’ve got a waistline to develop.
Ian Mckellen
You might be surprised by how interested young people are in older people.
Ian Mckellen
Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.
Ian Mckellen
You won’t hear me talk about my politics, you won’t hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won’t hear me comment on the Iraq war. You’ll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues.
Ian Mckellen
I got better as an actor, and still I’m getting better. That’s only been possible because there’s always been work.
Ian Mckellen
Magneto wants to cope with the difficulties thrust upon him by society and by his own nature.
Ian Mckellen
To be allowed for the first time in your later career to play leading parts in extremely popular movies is not a situation to worry about.
Ian Mckellen
I don’t normally take to Yorkshiremen.
Ian Mckellen
Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I’ve ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.
Ian Mckellen
When you grumble about a taxi being dirty, people your own age will absolutely agree with you, whereas younger people say, ‘You should be so lucky to have a taxi – I walk to work!’ So I have lots of young friends, who fortunately don’t treat me as a guru, a person that knows all the answers.
Ian Mckellen
I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 – 1976) lived and painted.
Ian Mckellen
Some relationships get easier as you get older, depending on what sort of person you are. I don’t think I’ve got any better at them.
Ian Mckellen
I remember Tom Stoppard saying to me when I came out, ‘I feel so sorry for you, because you’ll never have children.’ These days I would say, ‘Well, why not, Tom?’
Ian Mckellen
There are people who’ve enjoyed my work in the theater, and they let me know that it was special for them. I’m not going to say, ‘Well, you should have seen me as Gandalf!’
Ian Mckellen
‘The Da Vinci Code’ is the most popular book of our times.
Ian Mckellen
Will I miss Gandalf? Well, I don’t miss him, because people are constantly coming up to me mentioning him and talking about him, so I don’t feel that I’ve lost contact.
Ian Mckellen
It’s an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic – false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.
Ian Mckellen
The battle going on over gay marriage in America reveals an awful lot. The Bible belt – people hate gay people. Because the Bible tells them? No, the Bible tells them an awful lot of things that they ignore.
Ian Mckellen
Acting is a very big part of what human beings do. A dog is always a dog, but we’re always changing.
Ian Mckellen
I’ll never put my memoirs in print.
Ian Mckellen
Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old fr

Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend… they can all go drifting by unseen if you’re not careful.
Ian Mckellen
The BAFTAs give the British point of view, and the Oscars give the American point of view, but the truth is we’re all working in an international industry.
Ian Mckellen
In the ’50s and ’60s, the life of a gay man was a secret. Homosexuality was illegal, so you didn’t draw attention to yourself.
Ian Mckellen
There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore.
Ian Mckellen
My friends are my family.
Ian Mckellen
There are some fantastic parts for older actors.
Ian Mckellen
When I was playing Gandalf, I didn’t think, ‘Oh my dear, I’m playing a 7,000 year old wizard,’ because I’ve never met one, and I don’t know what they’re like.
Ian Mckellen
People on television have trouble with fame because audiences think they’re their mates.
Ian Mckellen
I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying, ‘This is fiction.’
Ian Mckellen
Who does understand life?
Ian Mckellen
Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.
Ian Mckellen
Thanks to every gay person in public and non-public life who has come out.
Ian Mckellen
I had never come across the ‘X-Men’ comics till I was asked to play Magneto, so I just jumped into that job.
Ian Mckellen
I can’t take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I’ll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.
Ian Mckellen