Born May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, Sir Ian McKellen is best known in the U.S. for impressive film roles in the 1990s, and has been a major stage star in England since the 60s. The classically trained actor was raised in the small town of Wigan during World War II, and later moved to Bolton with his family. McKellen’s mother died when he was 12, and his father passed away when he was 24, around the time that the actor was finding early success on the London stage. He attended St. Catharine’s College at Cambridge on a scholarship, and spent much of his time studying acting. One of his classmates was the now-famous actor Derek Jacobi, and McKellen later admitted to having a massive crush on him while in school.
Major stage success came quickly for the immensely talented actor, primarily in classical productions like “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet”. He achieved fame for his powerful performance in the title role of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II” in 1969, which was a huge hit at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival and on the West End. In 1972 he co-founded the Actors’ Company, and became one of the most prominent faces and spokespeople for the British theatre as a whole. A string of Royal Shakespeare Company productions in the mid-70s followed, cementing his status as one of England’s greatest actors, including “Romeo & Juliet” and a famous production of “Macbeth” alongside Judi Dench. McKellen was popular stateside as well, starring on Broadway in the controversial Holocaust drama “Bent” in 1979, which chronicled the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. Additionally, McKellen nabbed the prestigious Tony Award for Best Actor in 1981 for playing Salieri in “Amadeus”.
Until the late 1990s, McKellen was much better known as a stage actor, though he had found great success on screen as well, primarily in television adaptations of his theatrical performances. These included BBC productions of “Edward II”, “Hamlet”, and “Richard II” in 1970, as well as a 1966 “David Copperfield” mini-series, frequent appearances on the televised “Play of the Month” series (including “Hedda Gabler” in 1972), and much later as Iago in a 1990 television adaptation of “Othello”, among many other notable screen performances.
The heralded actor began an enormously successful Hollywood career with a bizarre turn in the Arnold Schwarzenegger flop “Last Action Hero” in 1993, and appeared later that year in the arthouse hit “Six Degrees of Separation” alongside Donald Sutherland, Will Smith, and Stockard Channing. One of his greatest performances to date came in 1995 with the title role in a film adaptation of “Richard III”, which he also co-produced and co-adapted. The role earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations, honors that don’t come close to doing justice to the gleeful audacity and depth of his performance. After a terrific Oscar-nominated turn in the James Whale biopic “Gods and Monsters” in 1998, McKellen became a blockbuster regular with roles as Magneto in the “X-Men” trilogy and Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films. The latter earned him another Oscar nod for the first installment, “The Fellowship of the Ring”. McKellen is currently dominating the summer movie season with “The Da Vinci Code” and the latest “X-Men” film, dubbed “The Last Stand”.
McKellen is one of the only openly gay actors working in mainstream cinema today, and has been outspoken about the rights of homosexuals in England, helping found the UK gay rights lobby group Stonewall in addition to his patronage of GAY-GLOS, a British Gay & Lesbian helpline. The actor was honored as a Commander of the British Empire in 1979, and was knighted in 1990 by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to the modern theatre. Truly one of the greatest actors alive, McKellen cannot be commended enough for his incredible performances, nor for his work in helping destroy stigmas against homosexuals in the entertainment industry and the world at large.