Ian Mckellen Quotes

My memory of 3D movies is Fernando Lamas in a swashbuckling movie. And I suppose it had been the fifties, in which swords came out at you, bullets came out at you, things were thrown into the auditorium, apparently. All that sort of cheap, "Oh, look at us, we've got 3D" isn't in the film.

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.

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

[There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot.

I'm cheaper than Anthony Hopkins. The other actors they asked to play Gandalf wouldn't go to New Zealand on that money for that length of time. I thought it would be a bit of an adventure. Tony Hopkins didn't think it would be an adventure. Tony is part of Hollywood. I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.

The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look, because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.

Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.

I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,'

No one needs to feel sorry for me or anyone else who has fallen victim to success.

If you're sounding right, you're probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right - if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were - really landed on it.

Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.

When we'd suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, 'Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.' As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.

I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887-1976) lived and painted.

My reaction to 3D is subtly. Things don't come out at you, but rather you - The audience come into the film.

My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out.