Ian McKellen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ian McKellen (2013)

Sir Ian Murray McKellen , CH , CBE (born May 25, 1939 in Burnley , Lancashire , England ) is a British actor . As a stage actor in London and on Broadway , he has received six Laurence Olivier Awards and one Tony Award . As a film actor, he gained greater fame from the 2000s, including in the role of "Gandalf" in the trilogies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and as "Magneto" in the X-Men series.

Life

Ian McKellen was born shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Burnley, England. His father, Denis Murray McKellen, was a civil engineer . McKellen's paternal grandparents were of Scottish and Northern Irish descent; hence his surname comes from. Like both McKellen's grandfathers, his father was a part-time lay preacher, and one of his great-grandfathers was a Protestant pastor in Ballymena , County Antrim .

The atmosphere at the McKellens' home was strongly Christian , but neither conformist nor institutionalized. His parents taught him that the best way to live out the Christian idea is to act in a Christian way. His mother, Margery Lois McKellen (nee Sutcliffe), died when McKellen was twelve years old and his father when he was 24. When he came out to his stepmother Gladys McKellen, she reacted with relief. As a Quaker she found it more important that he could be honest, especially since her religious community had not been interested in people's sexual orientation for decades .

McKellen is a gay and lesbian rights activist. As early as 1988, he commented on his homosexuality on a television show . In 1989 he was a co-founder of the Stonewall group , which mainly campaigned against the so-called Clause 28 .

A few years ago McKellen was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which the actor is actively watching . In June 2014 the now 70-year-old actor who was Cambridge University , the honorary doctorate awarded -Würde (Doctor of Letters).

Theater career

When McKellen was three years old, he and his parents attended a Peter Pan performance at the Manchester Opera House . The young Ian was fascinated by playing on stage and developed into a regular theatergoer in the following years. In this way, during the following years he came into first contact with works by Shakespeare , whose dramas he was particularly fond of. At the age of 18 he received a scholarship to St Catharine's College at Cambridge University , where he studied English literature. His student days were also shaped by acting. At university he was a member of the local theater company called the Marlowe Society , where he made his debut in stage performances such as Henry IV , Cymbeline and The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus .

After graduating from college, McKellen decided to become a full-time actor. He made his stage actor debut in 1961 in Coventry . Although he had no professional training as an actor, he was hired there at the Belgrade Theater for the play A Man for All Seasons . More pieces followed in regional repertoire theaters over the next four years , before he finally achieved his greatest success to date on stage in London's West End in 1965 . In the same year McKellen also became a member of the National Theater Company of the Old Vic Theater , making him his final breakthrough as a theater actor in Edinburgh in 1969 . He was a popular face on the UK theater stages in the 1970s and 1980s. He became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared at the Royal National Theater in a number of Shakespeare plays such as Macbeth and Othello in which he also impersonated leading roles. After McKellen interrupted his theater work for his film career around the turn of the millennium, he returned to the theater stage for the first time in a long time in 2007 and appeared in plays such as King Lear and The Seagull . In 2009 he was seen at the Theater Royal Haymarket in the play Waiting for Godot at the side of his longtime friend and colleague Patrick Stewart .

Film career

Ian McKellen at the world premiere of the third part of the Lord of the Rings in Wellington ( New Zealand )

His admission to the Royal Shakespeare Company underscored his importance as a British theater actor. Since the mid-1960s, he has only played minor roles in film productions. In 1993 he had a slightly larger role in the tragic comedy Life - A Six-Pack alongside Donald Sutherland and Will Smith . In the same year he impersonated Death in a supporting role in the action parody Last Action Hero . 1995 joined McKellen with his participation in Richard III. first and so far unique as a screenwriter in appearance. He also took on the title-giving main role. In 1998 he starred in Bryan Singer's Der Musterschüler in the leading role of an ex-Nazi.

His final breakthrough came with the portrayal of Magneto in the X-Men films and as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy . In these very opposite roles of the "super villain" and the wise "superfather" he was able to demonstrate his versatility. Sean Connery was originally intended for the role of the wise magician, but he had turned it down due to problems understanding the extensive Tolkien world.

For portraying director James Whale in Gods and Monsters , he won the Chlotrudis Award for Best Actor in 1999 and was nominated for an Oscar . In 2002 McKellen was nominated again for an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role as Gandalf in the first part of The Lord of the Rings . At this Academy Awards he appeared, probably the first nominee in Oscar history, accompanied by his partner.

In 2009, his portrayal of King Lear in the US program The Great Performances earned him an Emmy nomination, after having been nominated three times for the US television award in the past (1994 for And the Band Played On , 1996 for Rasputin and 2007 for extras ). In the same year McKellen was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Prize of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Donostia-San Sebastián . In the three-part film adaptation of the Tolkien novel The Hobbit , he again took on the role of Gandalf.

Ian McKellen has now received over forty film awards.

Other awards

He received the Order of Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1979, the London Critics' Circle Theater Award for Best Actor in 1989 , and in 1991 he was knighted by the British Queen . At the Berlinale 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Golden Bear for his life's work, listed by the Independent as the most influential homosexual of the year. The Georgia governor also made him an honorary lieutenant colonel in the National Guard . At that time, contrary to the American military's “ don't ask, don't tell ” policy, he was the only openly gay member of this army. In 2007 he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor by Elizabeth II . In 2014 he became Freeman of the City of London and in 2017 an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

particularities

  • Ian McKellen has portrayed historical figures on several occasions, for example Richard III. , Eduard II. , Antonio Salieri , John Keats , Tsar Nicholas II. , Adolf Hitler , John Profumo , Arthur Kronfeld , James Whale and Cecil Rhodes
  • Following a successful film adaptation of Shakespeare, he found his way into the film industry mainly through the science fiction and fantasy genre. Despite the sustained international popularity of his few film roles (especially Gandalf and Magneto ), McKellen cannot be pegged down to one type of role in this medium either ( see Typecasting ).
  • In the German dubbing of his films he was often spoken by Joachim Höppner , who, however, died in 2006. In the X-Men films he was dubbed by Jürgen Thormann , in the Hobbit trilogy Eckart Dux took over the dubbing from McKellen.
  • In March 1988, McKellen played a role as a vampire , a cross between Dracula and Nosferatu , in the video for the Pet Shop Boys song Heart . The music video based on the Dracula story was shot in Brežice , Slovenia . It was McKellen who convinced the Pet Shop Boys to play the 1988 'Anti- Clause 28 ' benefit concert at London's Piccadilly Theater.
  • McKellen performed as the main actor (Prospero) in an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest through the opening event of the 2012 Paralympics in London.
  • McKellen is close friends with fellow actor Sir Patrick Stewart . So he acted as justice of the peace at Stewart's third wedding.
  • He also has an almost lifelong friendship with Sir Derek Jacobi . It wasn't until almost 30 years later that they both developed strong romantic feelings for each other at the age of 18 and 19 (until 1967, homosexuality in Great Britain had been imprisoned for up to ten years). At this time Jacobi had been living with his current partner Richard Clifford for 10 years. The private friendship and professional collaboration between the two men continues today after comparable of backgrounds, focusing on sophisticated classic theater they were last from 2013 to 2016 as a nasty old couple in the Britcom - Series Vicious seen.
  • In the music video Listen to the Man by George Ezra , Ian McKellen plays himself, who loves the song and therefore just sings the song in the video shoot and doesn't let Ezra get a chance.

Filmography (selection)

Radio plays

Audio books

literature

  • Garry O'Connor: Ian McKellen: a biography , New York: St. Martin's Press, November 2019, ISBN 978-1-250-22388-3

Web links

Commons : Ian McKellen  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ian McKellen: an unofficial biography , Mark Barratt, Virgin Books, 2005, p. 2
  2. ^ Ian McKellen traces roots to Ballymena . UTV . Archived from the original on February 4, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 1, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.u.tv
  3. ^ The Advocate, December 11, 2001.
  4. ^ Timeline of lesbian and gay history - 1989. Stonewall , archived from the original on February 7, 2009 ; accessed on December 11, 2012 .
  5. ^ Emine Saner: Ian McKellen: 'My ambition is to get better as an actor'. In: Guardian. August 24, 2011, accessed December 19, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Honorary degrees 2014 . Retrieved September 1, 2014.
  7. ↑ Cinema : Background article Full of the role: Hollywoods cast carousel issue 02/11, p. 81.
  8. ↑ Oscars 2002: And the Oscar goes to…. The total hype! OutNow.ch, March 26, 2002, accessed on June 18, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Marc Shoffman: Ian McKellen ranked most influential gay man. PinkNews, July 3, 2006, accessed December 11, 2012 .
  10. ↑ Dennis Klein: Gandalf in the fight against terror. Queer.de, July 26, 2006, accessed December 11, 2012 .
  11. ↑ Ian McKellen: Justice of the Peace at Patrick Stewart's wedding? In: BUNTE.de. September 9, 2013, accessed July 10, 2014 .
  12. ↑ Ian McKellen Discusses Being Gay in The 60's | Full interview. Uploaded on Alan Carr's official YouTube channel : Chatty Man on August 4, 2017. Retrieved April 22, 2019.
  13. ↑ George Ezra - Listen to the Man. October 29, 2014, accessed December 16, 2014 .
  14. ↑ Ian McKellen reads Chronicles of Ancient Darkness . Retrieved November 21, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME McKellen, Ian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McKellen, Ian Murray (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film and stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Burnley , Lancashire, England, UK