From Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings to Magneto in X-Men, Ian McKellen knows his way around blockbuster roles. But in his new film, Mr. Holmes, he plays one of the original superheroes — Sherlock Holmes. This isn’t the supremely confident Sherlock Holmes for whom the most baffling crimes are merely “elementary.” In Mr. Holmes, McKellen plays a 93-year-old Sherlock retired to the English seaside after World War II. He’s an old man racing time and his diminishing memory to solve a case that has stumped and troubled him for years.
With Benedict Cumberbatch and Lucy Liu reviving the character on television with Sherlock and Elementary, and Robert Downey, Jr. taking the detective to the big screen in the Sherlock Homes franchise, Conan Doyle’s detective has seen a recent resurgence in popularity. But McKellen doesn’t worry about too much about competition. “Our version, nobody else has ever done,” McKellen tells Kurt Andersen. “I thought it would be fun to add to the mix.”
The director of Mr. Holmes is Bill Condon, who recently finished shooting a live action version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in which McKellen plays Cogsworth the clock. Condon also wrote and directed Gods and Monsters (1998), for which McKellen received his first Academy Award nomination. “He became a great friend after Gods and Monsters,” McKellen says. “If a script arrives and it’s from Bill, you hardly have to read it.”
Now an outspoken champion for gay rights, McKellen didn’t come out publicly until he was 49 years old. “The film industry welcomed me with open arms,” McKellen tells Kurt, noting that his offers for film roles only increased after coming out. It was “absolutely reverse of what’s meant to happen: everything’s meant to close down and you’re meant to be put back into a closet of society’s devising.”
McKellen was in his sixties before he became the huge movie star he is today, thanks to being cast in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings franchise. “I’m very, very, very, very, very lucky,” he admits. “I have no illusions, anybody of my age and nationality could have played Gandalf.” Other well-known British actors like Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins turned down the role. “I think they didn’t want to go to New Zealand,” McKellen quips. “It was too far away.”
Bonus Track: Kurt Andersen's full interview with Ian McKellen
- 07:42 – An Early Heartbreaker: McKellen recounts the story of his first love at age 9: a girl named Wendy. The two exchanged love letters. Over 60 years later, Wendy and McKellen had a surprise reunion where she confessed to burning the letters she had saved – on the morning of her wedding.
- 13:03 – A Late Debut: When McKellen came out as gay at the age of 49, the film industry welcomed McKellen with open arms, he says, earning him the nickname, “Gandolf the Gay.” Recently, McKellen was one of the grand marshals at the NYC gay pride parade, just on the heels of the historic SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage.
- 17:40 – His Indoctrination to Shakespeare: By the time he was 18, McKellen had already seen half the works of Shakespeare performed in the theater. He recalls some of the characters he met backstage, his favorite roles, and gay Shakespeare.
- 30:02 – Science, But Not Fiction: McKelllen explains his respect for Magneto from X-Men. He sees the mutant’s fight for integration as analogous to the challenges and struggles of minorities in our world.
- 31:05 – PG or Not PG: McKellen has noticed all of the main characters in Middle Earth smoke, even though The Lord of the Rings is a kids movie. He is stunned that it has gone unnoticed and uncensored. “There’s lots of second-hand smoke in Middle Earth,” McKellen observes.
- 37:06 – Which Genre?: The most difficult role McKellen has ever played was the comedy he confused for a drama. He was tormented by anxiety through rehearsals for Wild Honey, only to find success when the play opened for previews. But that was the best possible result, he says: “You don’t want to know you’re funny, you want to be funny.”