Ian Mckellen: In fact, my face has shrunk in the meantime, but it won'...

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.

Ian Mckellen

theatre waiting sweet

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.

Ian Mckellen

acting want play

It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It`s very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California.

Ian Mckellen

california actors careers

There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I've got better as an actor. I've learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it.

Ian Mckellen

proud actors energy

As for the clarity of the 48 frames, I've heard people say that it looks odd, it's too demanding, there's too much information, you don't know where to look.

Ian Mckellen

too-much-information people looks

In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.

Ian Mckellen

gay old-fashioned character

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.

Ian Mckellen

bullets memories looks

Television can take anything. It can take the most exaggerated of storytelling forms.

Ian Mckellen

storytelling form television

2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it's flat. But 3D isn't. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it's ideal, I think.

Ian Mckellen

adventure long thinking

When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.

Ian Mckellen

next jobs directors

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.

Ian Mckellen

ordinary america people

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

gay leadership reality

Most of the time when you do a job, a play or a film, you're wondering, "Will there be an audience?"

Ian Mckellen

wonder play jobs

That was the big effect Lord of the Rings had on me. It was discovering New Zealand. And even more precious were the people- not at all like the Australians.

Ian Mckellen

australia-and-new-zealand lord people

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

falling-in-love winning children

I am going around British secondary schools, as a gay man talking about my life, and encouraging schools to get rid of homophobic bullying and to care for their gay members of staff and their gay students.

Ian Mckellen

bullying gay school

I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.

Ian Mckellen

directors ideas thinking

Some directors don't tell you that it's not your fault, so you get increasingly depressed that you're not delivering what's required, and then you discover it's not you at all, it's something in the background that's out of focus.

Ian Mckellen

faults focus directors

The demographic of our audience is young. It also contains a high proportion of black, Jewish and gay people, who have all been encouraged by society to think of themselves as oddities or mutants. I hope that's why X-Men chimes with them - it's certainly why I was attracted to the idea in the first place.

Ian Mckellen

gay men thinking

I think I'm a bit gruffer than I used to be, and I'm certainly older.

Ian Mckellen

used-to-be used thinking

In fact, my face has shrunk in the meantime, but it won't be particularly noticeable because it's covered up with hair. So I hope I'm not alarmed if I ever do sit through the five movies.