relaxing between performances of
The Tragedy of Richard III
taking a break with Kathy Bates
on the set of Swept From the Sea
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Pamela's Film and Entertainment Site
Rolling Stone
With roles in Bryan Singer's Apt Pupil and Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, the cinephile's secret that is Sir Ian McKellen has been revealed to the rest of the moviegoing public. A highly distinguished and much-approbated stage actor and one of Shakespeare's foremost interpreters, the 59-year old knight has cultivated quite a following from his heretofore infrequent film roles, most notably in the filmization of his Richard III. In McKellen's interpretation, the deformed Richard was modernized into a gnarled Nazi leader.
Equal to his renown as a startlingly superb actor is his reputation as a passionate activist for gay rights. Ten years ago, he publicly announced his homosexuality in protest to the Thatcher government's "Section 28," a law making illegal the public promotion of homosexuality. That same year, he co-founded the Stonewall Group, an organization that lobbies for gay and lesbian equal rights.
In person, McKellen has a placidity that suggests a past life as a Zen master. Beneath the serenity lies an astute intelligence as well as an awareness of how to maneuver his way through Hollywood. With his Oscar-worthy performances in both Apt Pupil and Gods and Monsters, it apears to be smooth sailing henceforth.
PAMELA'S FILM & ENTERTAINMENT SITE (PV): What is the function of an actor? Because, in your case, being that you have this. . . I'm going to rephrase that. Being in your case, you're also openly gay. There's a certain pressure for people, especially in Hollywood, to be more responsible and pick more gay-themed roles or perhaps get away from that to prove that they are viable heterosexual actors. But, apart from that, when you're approaching a character, what is the function of an actor in a film?
IAN McKELLEN (IM): An actor is someone who tells stories along with other people who are not actors: directors and writers and such. And the stories should hold the audience's attention, either by making them laugh or making them cry or alerting their minds to various subjects.
But is there such a thing as a gay actor, which is, I suppose, the half of your question. Well, yes, I'm an actor who's gay and I'm a gay man who's an actor, to put it either way. But I don't in my life and not therefore in my work, which is a big part of my life, do I want to cut myself off from heterosexuality. It's a very fascinating phenomenon (laughs) and it's the source of everything that's gone wrong in the world, and probably the source of most that's gone right. But am I to say that I won't play Macbeth or King Lear or Prospero because they're basically straight characters? No, but I can bring to those characters, as I brought to Richard III, my awareness of the world as I see it and I look through gay eyes.
REPRISING BENT Since I came out, the first part I quite deliberately played, lest anyone should believe that the old line is true -- that if you're openly gay that people won't accept you playing a straight part -- I chose to play Jack Profumo in Scandal. Nothing is remembered [of him] except that he was a raging heterosexual. Since then, I think I've played about four gay parts and I've played thirteen straight ones. So now I don't really think about it anymore. I'm just what I always was: an actor. Which is as it should be. I hope Anne Heche is going to find the same thing. I think her coming out is absolutely remarkable for the film industry in this country. The maturity of the audience in just accepting her and wanting to go see her in whatever she chooses to be playing is wonderful. I hope that will encourage younger actors particularly not to listen to their managers who advise them to stay in the closet, otherwise they won't have a career. Who wants a career if you're going to spend your whole life lying about yourself? There's no career worth having.
You'd expect it to be a huge difference in my response to the part I was playing, but not at all. It felt just the same to me. But what was different was obviously my motives for doing the play. Initially I was playing a wonderful part in a groundbreaking play which actually taught the world about some unpleasant facts that had been ignored and kept quiet. Ten years later, having come out, I was acting with another openly gay actor Michael Kashman (sp?), we were at the National Theater directed by an ex-lover of mine, Sean Mathias, who was also openly gay. Here are all these gay people taking over the theater getting full houses. So that did feel like some wonderful affirmation of my life. But the rehearsing of the play and the playing of it felt very similar. But since I came out -- and I always have to explain my coming out was a little bit of a journey that most gay people don't have to do. It meant talking to the press, many people don't have to do that. But, to be fair, you're not out until there's noone in the world who you wouldn't say you were gay to so that includes the press, the Pope and everybody else.
