Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.
— Ian Mckellen
I remember Tom Stoppard saying to me when I came out, 'I feel so sorry for you, because you'll never have children.' These days I would say, 'Well, why not, Tom?'
When I came out, I told my stepmother Gladys, and she just said she had known for years and was glad I wasn't lying anymore.
Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.
I have lots of fans, they are mostly under the age of 12, boys and girls.
I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.
I had never come across the 'X-Men' comics till I was asked to play Magneto, so I just jumped into that job.
Eventually, before I die, I hope to have written about every part I've played.
You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues.
Gandalf is ever-present in my life. I like it.
It is really, really wonderful that in your old age you are protected by specialists who understand your problems and sort them out for you. Well, isn't that what we all need?
I am lucky, I don't have aches and pains. I do Pilates regularly, which is a series of stretching exercises, and I recommend it to anyone of my age because the temptation is not to exercise when you get older. Well, you should.
When I appeared in 'Coronation Street,' I lived in Manchester and enjoyed it very much.
Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.
The BAFTAs give the British point of view, and the Oscars give the American point of view, but the truth is we're all working in an international industry.
My own death threats have declined considerably.
If we just made one movie, 'The Hobbit,' the fact is that all the fans, the eight-, nine- and 10-year-old boys, they would watch it 1,000 times. Now, they've got three films they can watch 1,000 times.
The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.
There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud.
Even now, there are young actors who want careers as romantic leading men, and the best thing is not to reveal you're gay.
There's lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.
Who does understand life?
Most actors are not rich - they are very poor indeed. What keeps them going is that they just love the job.
I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book.
I'll never put my memoirs in print.
The press like to talk to actors. They mustn't be surprised when actors talk back to them.
I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying, 'This is fiction.'
The wonderful thing about modern medicine is that so many of these complaints that used to signify old age and decline can be coped with.
I think with Shakespeare you can be required to do absolutely anything at the turn of a sixpence - suddenly you go into a battle, suddenly you utter something passionate.
I certainly wouldn't define myself as a northerner. I'm not even really sure what that means. I've lived in London for 50 years. I wasn't born here, but I have spent most of my life here. So I don't make much of it, to be honest. I'm just myself.
Why not celebrate those who want to marry and bring up a family?
If I say often enough that I'm going to be in 'King Kong,' I'm hoping that Peter Jackson will take the hint.
Establishing the rights for gay people to be married would cost the Australian government nothing financially and would gain for you worldwide respect from people like us and, of course, would change lives enormously - the lives of gay people and of their friends and of their families and therefore of Australia as a whole.
Anyone who thinks Peter Jackson would fall for market forces around him rather than artistic integrity doesn't know the guy or the body of his work.
You might be surprised by how interested young people are in older people.
There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore.
In the '50s and '60s, the life of a gay man was a secret. Homosexuality was illegal, so you didn't draw attention to yourself.
Gandalf's a good guy, and it's a good part. He says the right things, he believes the right things. An actor can have fun with it.
The one thing you can ask, I think, is that actors get paid a living wage. I would like it if all the repertory theatres that currently exist could do that. It would make a huge difference.
'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
There's something wholesome about the theatre.
What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?
It's nice for me to be in touch with a younger generation.
Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.
I always walk up the escalator on the Tube, and I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and that's good exercise, but you need more than that.
Bolton School has a great tradition in the liberal arts.
There are some fantastic parts for older actors.
I can't make up my mind whether I want to dance like Josef Brown or dance with Josef Brown.
There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay.
One school invited me down, as two pupils had come out, and the headmaster didn't know what to do about it. I said, 'How many students here are gay?' and he said, 'Just these two.' Clearly not. 'How many gay members of staff have you got?' He had no idea. And this was a concerned man.
