Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen (born May 25, 1939, Burnley, Lancashire, England) is a British actor of great versatility, noted for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and for his eclectic filmography. Counted among the most respected stage actors of his time, he is also known in cinema for his portrayals of the immensely popular characters Gandalf and Magneto.

Early life and education

Shortly after McKellen was born and before the start of World War II, his family moved to a coal-mining town called Wigan in Greater Manchester, England. Though his early childhood was spent amid the austerity and malaise of war, McKellen was introduced to theater at a young age by his family. He was three when he watched his first play, a production of Peter Pan, with his parents. His first encounter with Shakespeare onstage came when his sister took him to a performance of Twelfth Night. As a student of Bolton School, he began acting in school productions, which included Shakespeare’s plays. The school’s summer camp trips to Stratford-upon-Avon (birthplace of Shakespeare) also gave him the opportunity to see celebrated thespians, such as Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, and Charles Laughton, onstage. McKellen attended St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where as an undergraduate student he acted in more than 20 plays, two of which were directed by John Barton, later of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Making a name onstage

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1961, McKellen made his professional debut in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. He made his West End debut in 1964 with an award-winning supporting performance in James Saunders’s A Scent of Flowers. Acting steadily throughout the 1960s, McKellen won both popular and critical acclaim in his performances as Shakespeare’s Richard II and Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II for the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. In 1971 he cofounded the Actors’ Company, a collective of actors who had equal say in the choosing and casting of plays and in the recruiting of directors. Touring with the troupe, he featured in plays by Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, and William Congreve, among others. He left the group in 1974 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company at the invitation of Barton. His leading roles in the company’s 1976 productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth—both directed by longtime collaborator Trevor Nunn—were significant in establishing his reputation as a stage actor; for the latter he won the Plays & Players’ London Theatre Critics’ Award for best actor. Nunn also directed McKellen’s memorable turn as the wily villain Iago in Othello (1989), winning him more best actor awards. Beyond Shakespeare, McKellen also performed in the troupe’s staging of works by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw and Frank Wedekind.

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McKellen proved himself a versatile actor, playing a range of characters from Shakespearean to contemporary and many roles in between. Though his interpretations were frequently controversial, his immense talent for acting was unquestionable. He has received five competitive Laurence Olivier Awards for his work in the London stagings of Pillars of the Community (1977), The Alchemist (1977–78), Bent (1979), Wild Honey (1984), and Richard III (1991). He also won two Society’s Special Awards (2006 and 2020) at the Olivier Awards for his lasting impact on British theater. In 1981 McKellen won a Tony Award for his performance as Antonio Salieri in a Broadway production of Amadeus. He also directed several plays and wrote and performed a one-man show called Acting Shakespeare.

Film and television

Although McKellen’s most notable work until the 1990s was in theater, he regularly appeared in film and television. In one of his earliest roles, he essayed the adult David Copperfield in a 1966 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television adaptation of the eponymous Charles Dickens novel. Recordings of a number of his stage performances also made their way to television screens.

McKellen first headlined a film in Priest of Love (1981), a biographical drama based on the life and letters of novelist D.H. Lawrence. McKellen also produced memorable performances in the film version of David Hare’s Plenty (1985) and Richard III (1995), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play that is set in a fictionalized version of England in the 1930s; McKellen also cowrote the screenplay. He won a Golden Globe for his role as Tsar Nicholas II in the television film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996). In 1998 he portrayed director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, for best actor.

Perhaps the most iconic of McKellen’s movie performances is the role of the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003), based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy (1954–55). He earned another Oscar nomination (for supporting actor) for his work in the 2001 film. McKellen later reprised the role of Gandalf in a series of films (2012, 2013, 2014) based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937). He is also set to play the wizard again in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, slated for release on December 17, 2027.

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Also starting in the early 2000s, McKellen provided the first big-screen interpretation of Magneto, the popular Marvel Comics supervillain, in the X-Men series (2000, 2003, 2006, 2014). His take on the character was as beloved as it was foundational, and McKellen has returned to the role for multiple films in the franchise, most prominently in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). He will revisit the character once more in the much-anticipated Avengers: Doomsday, set for release on December 18, 2026.

McKellen’s subtlety and exactitude as an actor were showcased in the character study Mr. Holmes (2015), about the attempts of a nonagenarian Sherlock Holmes to resolve a case that has bedeviled him for 30 years. In 2017 he appeared in the musical Beauty and the Beast. McKellen also starred in the television comedy Vicious (2013–16), in which he and Derek Jacobi played a sniping but ultimately loving gay couple. In 2019 McKellen starred with Helen Mirren in the thriller The Good Liar, and he also appeared in Cats, an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hugely successful stage musical. McKellen played the part of a famous and quirky painter long past his prime in the Steven Soderbergh-directed The Christophers (2025).

Personal life

Though McKellen had been open about his sexuality with those close to him, he publicly came out as gay in 1988 and is a noted gay rights activist. In 1989 he cofounded Stonewall, a charity that campaigns for equal rights for the LGBTQ community.

He was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and was knighted in 1991. He was named to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2007.