David Jobling interview with Ian McKellen

Introduction - Just for the record I told Sir Ian he had many many devoted fans who have asked me to tell him so, and I pointed him towards this list and many of the others on the net where the love and devotion poured out for him is plentiful - He says "He says he feels it".

Copyright 2004 David Jobling
All Rights Reserved.

David Jobling: James Whale is a really special role because you're showing a mature gentleman who is a bit of a rogue, a bit naughty and such but ultimately he's a very very well rounded character. Did you ever get to actually meet him? I suppose he was on the other side of the world.

Sir Ian McKellan: No, I could of met him, I mean our dates overlapped and I know a number of actors who worked with him but his heyday was in the 1930's and he died in 1957. So, just as I was going to university he committed suicide in California. But it was a wonderful character for me to play. Not only was he central to the book "Father of Frankenstein", and anyone who likes "Gods and Monsters" should read the source material it's a wonderful novel by Christopher Brown.

But once that was adapted as a film, it was wonderful for me because it was a Hollywood movie in which an Englishman of my own age was the leading part and a gay man, like myself; And someone who'd come from the provinces like I'd done in the UK, had come to London to act which is what he did and it was odd when he came to live in London, he lived ten doors away from the house that I first lived in in London and the first theatre he acted in in London was the first theatre I acted in. So there was a number of connections which none of them quite so strong perhaps the physical appearance because he looked rather like my father and so I was encouraged that I could look a little bit like him as well – but that wouldn't have been necessary. But it was a wonderful film to make. We did it in four weeks, very very quickly-

David Jobling: Yeah!

Sir Ian McKellan: With a great group of people led by Bill Condon who won the Oscar for his adaptation of the novel and although that didn't bring quite enough attention to the film, so not enough people saw it in the cinema, thanks to DVD and Video, and the size of the film fitting rather nicely onto a home screen, I think most people have probably seen it under those conditions and go on seeing it so its one of the things I'm most proud of having done and enjoyed doing it at the time and am glad I did it.

David Jobling: Yeah; oh gosh I would be too. Here in Australia we know you more from film obviously because you haven't acted here on stage before have you?

Sir Ian McKellan: No.

David Jobling: Is it likely you would ever bring your one-man Shakespeare here?

Sir Ian McKellan: No I don't think so. I did that for about ten years and why it didn't come this far I don't know. I mean it went right across the States and across Europe and for long seasons in various cities, but no I didn't bring it here. I think I'm a bit too old for it now it's rather a physical show and being on stage for two and half-hours on your own is very very tiring

David Jobling: Yep.

Sir Ian McKellan: And in the end a little bit dispiriting on the whole because you travel around perhaps just with a stage manager and while that can be enjoyable, as a way of life I much much prefer to be in a play. And you know I was very glad on the first visit, professional visit to Australia and Sydney that I should come with a full-scale production. I mean it doesn't happen very often. Anyway often actors come from the UK in solo shows or two people sitting on the stage together or four people in "Hollow Crown" standing up in dinner jackets reading - although that's a sort of theatre, I mean, there's nothing like a play and so to come with "Dance of Death" one of the great modern plays with the full production from London was rather old fashioned but the best way to do it for me.

David Jobling: It's very physical on stage in that you're rolling about and get thrown over a couch -

Sir Ian McKellan: I know -

David Jobling: and the couch lands on you. How's that to cope with? (Ian shows me a nasty looking cut on his finger) Yeah I noticed that

Sir Ian McKellan: I got a cut on my finger I just stopped from breaking my finger the other night. (He giggles) One of the first actors I ever worked with, Bernard Kilby in the Belgrave Theatre Coventry, when I was just starting out. He was leading the company, he was leading man and in one production he fell over the sofa rather as I fall over the sofa in "Dance of Death" and he died as a result of it-

David Jobling: Really!

Sir Ian McKellan: so I think of Bernard every night when I go over (he laughs) but ah, no I think that fatality is unlikely.

David Jobling: You're all right though, I mean you've got a cut finger

Sir Ian McKellan: A cut finger is one thing-

David Jobling: Yeah, lord. So what about Magneto, I mean here.. I'll tell you my experience; I saw "Gods and Monsters" and then I saw "X Men". I used to read "X Men" –

Sir Ian McKellan: Oh yes.

David Jobling: and I'm 42 so I think probably a lot of kids my age would have read it, I'm sure kids still read it now; really believing that there was a code inside there that these X Men were queer, and here you are now, like thirty years later actually saying it. You're being quoted in the 20th Century Fox releases about the film saying that you like doing it because it's about outcasts –

Sir Ian McKellan: That's right.

David Jobling: In "X Men 2" there's a marvelous scene towards the end of the play where you ask Pyro what his real name is, (I mimic Magneto) "What's your real name" (Ian chuckles) and it's so, um, it reminds me so much of being a teenage lad who hasn't come out yet –

Sir Ian McKellan: The publishers of that title Marvel tell me that the "X Men" is their favorite publication before `Superman' and `Spiderman' and anything else because it's got a social purpose and it was young gay people like you, young blacks, young Jews anyone that feels themselves apart from society or is abused by society for some innate quality who identify with mutants who have the same sort of problem writ large. It is a metaphor, a parable for the outcasts in society, and that's how it was sold to me by Brian Singer the director –

David Jobling: Oh okay.

Sir Ian McKellan: He said to me "You have to do this about us", and the scene of the second movie "X Men 2" where the young mutant leaves the school and arrives with some fellow mutants and comes out to his parents as being a mutant – his mother says "Have you always known you were a mutant dear?" (We both laugh) is a familiar situation for a gay person.

David Jobling: Yup.

Sir Ian McKellen: So of course there's much else in the films apart from that. But I don't think perhaps I'd just want to be in X Men if it was an adventure story because, you know, the dialogue is pretty thin and the situations are fairly obvious but as there is this undercurrent and; well it's not undercurrent it's overt –

David Jobling: Pretty much out there. Yeah-

Sir Ian McKellen: Yes. Then I'm, you know, I think it brings together two sides of my life very happily. I come from a long line of missionaries and preachers and teachers and people who-

David Jobling: Is that Church of England?

Sir Ian McKellen: No no no way way below that, Congregationalists and Quakers and people who were quite radical in their thinking-

David Jobling: Quakers are quite forward thinking aren't they?

Sir Ian McKellen: Absolutely. Pacifists and very understanding about gay people and way in advance of other Christian sects and so to stand up for what you believe in whether it's going to be popular or not is a family tradition and one that I didn't really connect with until I came out. Now sometimes doing it through my abilities as an actor is a very pleasing. Well I feel I'm in the family tradition in a good way now.

David Jobling: Yeah that's really cool. Are there gay roles that you'd like to play?

Sir Ian McKellen: Yes there is. There's one that I should be playing right now as we speak but I can't because I'm in Sydney. A film of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" is being made and I was all set to play the merchant Antonio "For sooth I know not why I'm so sad" his first line which opens the play and opens the film. Well everybody watching knows why he's so sad – his boyfriend has just told him he's going to get married. Antonio is resoundingly homosexual and we shouldn't be surprised that Shakespeare has such a character in one of his plays because he was so interested in the whole variety of human nature and it's only latterly that academics have cottoned on to this. And rather late in the day those of us that do his plays have realized that there's a wonderful examination of sexuality in Shakespeare and of the ambiguity of human sexuality. But Antonio is absolutely clearly a man who loves other men and I mean to cope with it in a rather alien society he is as much an outcast as the Jew is and as the black people are in the play, something that's also been neglected. So at last I was going to play Antonio but in a film with Al Pacino playing Shylock but alas those dates got shifted and in the end conflicted with "Dance of Death" in Sydney so here I am.

David Jobling: Well I mean it's great for us-

Sir Ian McKellen: Thank you.

David Jobling: Unfortunate for you in that regard. What about directing? Have you ever directed much or had any interest in that sort of thing?

Sir Ian McKellen: I've directed plays yes. I did quite a bit of it in the 70's and realize although I quite enjoyed it I wasn't very good at it. There are enough bad directors around without me adding to the list. I have a facility to see what problems the actors are going through but you know, if you're in a company you're on hand to help, but to be absolutely in charge of the whole enterprise and be sympathetic as you have to be to everyone's problems and also sympathetic to everyone's different qualities and attitudes and to be a good director on a set or on a rehearsal room you have to be able to be a good host you know?

David Jobling: Yes.

Sir Ian McKellen: What's everyone drinking? They're all drinking something different. They've all got different problems. Some want to sit down. Some people know each other some people don't. Some people are shy. Some people are out-going and you have to bring them all together as a company. Well that's a great test of someone's social abilities and I perhaps I do have that these days but my expertise is really as an actor.

David Jobling: And do you think you keep extending as an actor?

Sir Ian McKellen: Oh yes. I think if I felt I was just coasting along and doing what I'd done before, you know, I'd stop. I don't think I would find it interesting or energizing. There's no sense of wanting to stop but if I find one day that the parts I'm being offered are going over old ground well, I shall turn them down as I do now and probably just shudder to a halt and put myself in the garage, you know. Yes I've always looked at each job as it's come along and said to myself am I going to learn anything from this. About how to do this job of acting. So I've often taken jobs that friends thought I was crazy to do, because they were in odd places and perhaps not always the leading part, and for not very much money. And those sort of considerations are much less important to me than who am I going to work with and what is this part, what is this whole project. If we've got enough time to do it and everyone else is good I'm happy to join in, it doesn't matter where it's happening. It's always been an attempt to get better. Here we are doing "Dance of Death" for the third time we started it on Broadway in New York, we did it in West End of London and here we are and lucky theatre goers in Sydney because you're seeing the best version of it, absolutely the best.

David Jobling: Well it's a good version.

Sir Ian McKellen: And I think probably we feel that we've cracked it now but it's a very very difficult play to do.

David Jobling: Has it been the same three of you all along?

Sir Ian McKellen: No. In New York it was just me and Sean Mathias the Director and the same translation (by Richard Greenberg) when we did it in London it was this group that came together, Owen Teale and Frances `Franki' De La Tour and the wonderful Rob Jones set, and the lighting which is quite remarkable I think.

David Jobling: Yeah the set's fantastic.

Sir Ian McKellen: Yeah it is. It's basically that production, and we've reworked it. Sean's been over here helping us and as I said earlier the audiences appetite for irony and humor has I think opened up the actors perception of the play so it's been a very good trip.

David Jobling: Is there much about Australia that makes you scratch your head and wonder?

Sir Ian McKellen: An awful lot but we wont go into that now.

(We laugh)

Sir Ian McKellen: Well I just went to the museum, one of the museums in this city, Museum of Sydney it's called, outside there are some remarkable sculpture of tree-trunks and so on that speak to you in languages I don't understand – just names I think, from the past. And I'd expected a Holocaust Museum when I went inside and I'd expected some examination of the interaction between the Aboriginals and the Europeans but there was an awful lot of interest there and I'm reading a lot of books about it because I'm very ignorant and finding it all very interesting and I think the only political point I would make really on this subject is that when there's great pressure brought on your Prime Minister to apologize I think perhaps we in Britain could start by apologizing because it's all our fault really wasn't it?

David Jobling: Yeah it was rather.

Sir Ian McKellen: If there's any blame to be attached and if we can represent the people who sent those unfortunates out to this strange land that they thought was barren land all those years ago well it's perhaps not the descendants of the people who were settlers but rather the people who sent the settlers who should start with apologizing. You can't take history back, but you try not to repeat history, that's the point.

David Jobling: Ya, learn by it.

Sir Ian McKellen: Ya.

David Jobling: Yeah, in my life I was nine years old before Australian Aboriginals were considered to be citizens of this country which is frightening and depressing and horrible. Look going on to things that I'm perhaps more excited by – Magneto and Xavier, they seem like they're having a love hate relationship.

Sir Ian McKellen: Oh they're just good friends. But they're two sides of the same coin aren't they and their attitudes as to what to do about being a mutant, do you integrate? Do you behave? Do you keep quiet? Or do you make a fuss, and perhaps claim that your experiences of life are so special that you are thought to be superior to the rest of the population which is rather Magneto's view, leading him to be over violent on occasion of course. That was a familiar division in any civil rights movement I think. Gay people black people or mutants I think that's the point but they have in the past been very close allies they started Xaviers school after all, but I don't think there's any sense that really what they wanted to do was to shack up together and forget that they're mutants and the lead a quiet life together as two old biddies, I don't think that was quite their style.

David Jobling: Oh, okay. I wonder if the two of you, Patrick Stewart and yourself sit there and talk abut your motivations line by line the way that we did at acting school sort of thing?

Sir Ian McKellen: I think with our mutual background of the Royal Shakespeare Company we both say to each other "Why aren't our speeches a bit longer, we could have a good long Brutus and Cassius argument here" and we've made that point to Brian Singer who has to say "No no no, this is a film"

David Jobling: Get real lads.

Sir Ian McKellen: The pictures are perhaps more potent than the words and also it is of course based on a comic strip where the words are important but are minimal and therefore that's appropriate, but no, Patrick and I sit around gossiping about days gone bye and people we know and our own good fortune of, not having escaped from the classic theatre, I mean he's always going back to it as I am but the fact that we're allowed to work in another medium and reach wider audiences is something that we can feel pleased about.

David Jobling: Thanks for giving me some time.