Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen recently starred in Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre in London, playing Falstaff in Robert Icke’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2.

About Ian McKellen

In a career spanning over 60 years, Ian McKellen has been the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for two Oscars, four BAFTA’s and five Emmy Awards

Ian McKellen’s celebrated career encompasses genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular television and to fantasy and science fiction films.

He first acted at school and with amateur groups in the north of England, where he was born and brought up. He studied English at Cambridge University and, since 1961, has worked non-stop in the British theatre. He has been leading man and produced plays, modern and classic, for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain and in the West End of London.

In 2019 McKellen became the first actor to top The Stage 100 list of most influential people in British theatre, following his triumphant UK Tour and West End run of Ian McKellen on Stage which raised £5 million to support regional theatres.

Sir Ian was knighted in 1991. He is a co-founder of Stonewall UK, which lobbies for legal and social equality for gay people. In 2008, he was appointed Companion of Honour, “for services to drama and to equality’.

Ian McKellen’s previous theatre roles

Ian McKellen recently starred in Frank and Percy at The Other Palace theatre in London, and Mother Goose at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.

Ian McKellen has enjoyed an illustrious career on stage, not least inhabiting some of Shakespeare’s most iconic roles including Hamlet, Macbeth, Iago, Richard II and III as well as in previous productions of King Lear as Edgar, Kent and in the title role. He was last on stage in the West End in Jonathan Munby’s celebrated production of King Lear at the Duke of York’s Theatre.

He was in the first production of Martin Sherman’s sensational Bent and in premières of plays by Arnold Wesker, Peter Shaffer, Michael Frayn, Alan Ayckbourn, Mark Ravenhill and currently Ben Wetherill (Frank and Percy). Of late he has starred in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land (with Patrick Stewart) and as Mother Goose in Jonathan Harvey’s pantomime. As Salieri in Amadeus he won every available award on Broadway.

In Shakespeare he has triumphed as Richard II, Macbeth (with Judi Dench), Coriolanus, Iago, Richard III (also on film) and most recently as King Lear (twice) and as an 80 year old Hamlet in Sean Mathias’ upcoming film. For over a decade, he toured his one-man show, Acting Shakespeare, at home and abroad.

Ian McKellen’s film and TV roles

McKellen is recognised worldwide as Magneto in the X-Men films and as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. He received his first Academy Award® nomination, for Best Actor, as the gay film director James Whale, in Bill Condon’s 1998 classic Gods and Monsters. Since he has starred in The Da Vinci Code, Mr Holmes, Beauty and the Beast, All is True, The Good Liar, The Critic, and Hamlet.

McKellen’s TV work stretches from Rasputin (Golden Globe Award) to Coronation Street, from Extras with Ricky Gervais to Vicious with Derek Jacobi, The Dresser with Anthony Hopkins, The Da Vinci Code, and the voice of Cogsworth in the live-action adaptation of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

On the first ever Film On Four, he was Stephen Frears’ Walter.

Book tickets to Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre in London

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Ian McKellen Press Interviews

InterviewIan McKellen: ‘Whenever I fall in love, I wonder: are they going to leave me one day?’ (Claire Allfree, The Telegraph, 24 February 2024) - Read more