I quite like it when I'm on the Tube and people offer me their seat. Sometimes I take it. The other day I was offered a seat by a pregnant lady. I thought, 'That's going a bit far.'
— Ian Mckellen
Some relationships get easier as you get older, depending on what sort of person you are. I don't think I've got any better at them.
How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.
I get pretty grumpy about TV.
I love the Broadway audiences, who relish live drama and don't hesitate to display their enthusiasm.
If I was a star, it would be difficult to go off and do 'Coronation Street.' So I guess I'm not a star.
'The Da Vinci Code' is the most popular book of our times.
I got intrigued by working in small theatres.
I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.
If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you.
Actors don't, in fact, retire, do they? It took me a while to remember that.
I don't normally take to Yorkshiremen.
Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?
If you get criticized, good - I don't think people get criticized enough. People talk behind your back and they criticize you, but they don't often come up and say it to you.
I just followed my parents' example and advice on living, which was to leave the world a better place than you found it. They were professional do-gooders, ministers of the church, social workers, teachers, and missionaries, that sort of thing.
In any human-rights campaign, everybody must do what they can.
Will I miss Gandalf? Well, I don't miss him, because people are constantly coming up to me mentioning him and talking about him, so I don't feel that I've lost contact.
Acting is a very big part of what human beings do. A dog is always a dog, but we're always changing.
Quakers are terrific.
My friends are my family.
Doing some of the 'Lord Of The Rings' press junkets got a bit claustrophobic.
I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.
I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.
It's my impression that I've done every job that I've been asked to do.
People on television have trouble with fame because audiences think they're their mates.
I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them.
I think I've become more modest as the years have gone on.
What's nice for me, having identified myself for years as being rather shy, is now, wherever I am, in public, there tends to be a friendly face who's pleased to see me, and I like that.
The first film role I deliberately chose to play after I came out was a raging heterosexual, John Profumo.
Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel.
I'm not someone who wears shades all the time and ducks into a darkened car in case I'm recognized - that would be absolute misery.
When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.
In the U.K. there is still work to be done, particularly in schools, stopping the homophobic bullies in the playground and introducing unbiased discussion on gay issues in the classroom.
People who are truly horrible are often the most interesting people in the room. You look at them and just say, 'Why?'
I like sleeping a lot.
On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.
Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if you're not careful.
I've always felt that 'X-Men' was about something serious. It wasn't just fantasy.
I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.
I don't think many people will re-read 'The Da Vinci Code.'
I live for the text. It's my job.
'The Lego Movie?' I've never heard of it.
You see people in Hollywood trying to make blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's not possible. There's some god up there saying, 'You will fail now.' But I suppose that's true of us all.
I don't have Gandalf the White's certainty about everything.
It's easier to go from theatre to film than the other way round. In film you're absolutely loved and cossetted and cared for. In film your director makes your performance. In theatre you're carrying it all.
I often get mistaken for Dumbledore. One wizard is very much like another.
I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
Fame creeps up on you.
In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.
Every time you work is a challenge. There's a constant worry about it, and it's a side of acting I don't like.
