Ian McKellen Biography

Ian McKellen Ian Murray McKellen is a veteran British stage and screen actor best known for his roles as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and as Magneto in the X-Men trilogy. He was the only performer from The Lord of the Rings to receive an Academy Award nomination.McKellen was born on May 25, 1939, in Burnley, Lancashire. His father, Denis Murray McKellen, was a civil engineer and lay preacher, and both of his grandfathers were preachers as well. Denis died when McKellen was twenty-four; his mother Margery Lois McKellen (born Sutcliffe) died when the actor was twelve. He has a sister named Jean.McKellan's acting career started at the Bolton Little Theater. When he was eighteen he won a scholarship to St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge to study English drama with aspirations to become a journalist. Here he met another future British actor, Derek Jacobi. He developed a crush on Jacobi and has said that this crush was a passion that was undeclared and unrequited.In 1964 he had his first serious relationship with a history teacher from Bolton named Brian Taylor. The relationship lasted eight years and ended in 1972. In 1978 he met his second partner, actor Sean Mathias at the Edinburgh Limehouse in London. This relationship lasted ten years but is said to have been full of conflicts over McKellen's success in acting versus Mathias's less successful career.McKellen made his stage debut in Coventry in 1961 and made his West End Theater debut in 1964. In 1966 he landed his first film role in The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling produced by the Mirisch Brothers. The film went unfinished and unreleased after an early snow put the shooting even further behind than it was. Mirisch decided to cut their losses and abandon filming, but McKellen was still paid 4000. This was enough money to let him live comfortably while working for lower wages in the theater.In 1969, he portrayed King Edward II of in the Prospect Theater Company's touring production of Marlowe's controversial Edward II. The production was controversial because of violent torture scenes and implicit homosexuality.McKellen founded the Actor's Company in 1972 with his friend Edward Petherbridge. Between 1974 and 1978 he played leading roles in Royal Shakespeare Company productions including Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Alchemist.In 1979, he starred in the Broadway play called Bent, about gay men in Nazi death camps. Despite this role, McKellen had not yet made his sexual orientation public. McKellen publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program in 1988 to take a stand against a piece of legislation that would make public promotion of homosexuality a crime. Since then he has been active in the gay rights movement. He was listed as the #1 most influential gay person in the 2006 Independent of Sunday Pink List.In 1979 he was made a Commander in The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and was knighted in 1990 for his outstanding work and contributions to theater.Throughout the 1980s McKellen continued to act in theater productions and won several awards. During the 1990s he had a few supporting and minor roles in movies and television programs, but didn t break into American movie mainstream until he portrayed an old Nazi officer in the movie Apt Pupil, based on a story by Stephen King.He became a major global star when he landed leading roles in the blockbuster films series X-men first in 2000, starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, and Rebecca Romijn. His next blockbuster series Lord of the Rings began in 2001, and was directed by Peter Jackson and co starred Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, and Liv Tyler.In May 2006 Sir Ian played the part of crippled Sir Leigh Teabing in Dan Brown's blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, which starred Tom Hanks as Dr. Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie, and Alfred Molina as Bishop Manuel.A spin-off of X-Men, Magneto is slated to be released in 2007.