It’s
hard to imagine the film world without Sir Ian McKellen behind the
roles of two of the most important pop culture characters of our time: Lord of the Rings‘ Gandalf and X-Men’s Magneto. But as the actor recently shared in PEOPLE, both of those roles came very close to not happening.
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According to McKellen, he was initially offered a part in Mission: Impossible II, opposite Tom Cruise. Because he wasn’t given the whole script, however, he found it difficult to sign on for the role. “I
couldn’t judge from reading just those scenes what the script was
like,” he revealed. “So I said no. And my agent said, ‘You can’t say no
to working with Tom Cruise!’ and I said, ‘I think I will.’”
Turns out fate works in mysterious ways — the day after turning down the film, McKellen was offered both Gandalf and Magneto by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and X-Men director Bryan Singer, respectively. And when McKellen became concerned that he’d have to bow out of Lord of the Rings because X-Men production
ran behind schedule, Singer fortunately realized how important that
other role was. “Well, you must do Gandalf. I’ll make sure you get out
in time,” Singer said, according to McKellen. Jackson even promised to
“keep it free” for him.
Meanwhile, as he tells it, Mission: Impossible II was “put off, put off, put off” — “I had decided to do that, I wouldn’t have been in X-Men and I wouldn’t have been in Lord of the Rings,” McKellen told PEOPLE.
“You can’t prepare for luck,” he added. “I’ve learned that you’ve got to be ready for the luck when it arrives, but you’re going to need the luck.”
The actor regales audience with tales of Maggie Smith, Judi Dench – and his research into the missionary position
Ian McKellen has brunch at the British Consulate-General with Jane
Seymour, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.
Photograph: Michael Kovac/Getty Images
Of
all the actors gunning for recognition in the best actor field at next
year’s Oscars, few have campaigned harder this week in Los Angeles than Ian McKellen.
The actor, twice nominated for Gods and Monsters and The Lord of the
Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, has yet to win a golden statuette,
despite amassing countless other accolades over the course of his
50-year career.
The 76-year-old is currently on the campaign trail for Mr Holmes,
a film that reunites the actor with his Gods and Monsters
writer/director, Bill Condon. McKellen stars as an ageing incarnation of
Sherlock Holmes, reflecting on his career and mortality. For McKellen,
it marks his first major on-screen lead role since The Lord of the Rings
made the actor a household name.
McKellen has taken to the awards game with evident gusto. On
Saturday, he worked the room of Academy voters at the annual Governors
Ball, where he sat with Condon, and his co-star in the film, Laura Linney.
The morning after the awards, he was feted at a brunch hosted by the
British consul general, attended by Kathy Bates and McKellen’s friend
Patrick Stewart. Tuesday saw him take part in a moderated discussion
with director Guillermo del Toro, who was initially supposed to direct
The Hobbit films, before Peter Jackson came back on board. And lastly,
on Thursday, McKellen performed a monologue about his favourite female
co-stars, for a room full of Academy members.
Mute
The hour-long presentation was first performed at the Mill Valley
Film Festival last month, where McKellen was awarded with a Lifetime
Achievement Award. He said on Thursday night at the Beverly Hills Fine
Arts Theatre to the sold out audience, that the monologue was born out
of the festival’s theme of honouring women in film. Over the course of
his prolific career, the actor has worked alongside some of cinema’s
greatest women, including Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Ava Gardner and Meryl Streep. Here are the top takeaways from the evening:
Meryl Streep is good at gossip
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McKellen
fondly recalled working with Streep on the 1985 film Plenty, written by
and based on the play by acclaimed playwright, David Hare. “We swapped
clothes, Meryl and I,” McKellen joked, showing the audience a photo of
him donning a hat Streep wore in one of their scenes together.
Of Streep, McKellen said she’s “capable of gossiping right up until action - then Meryl vanishes, and the character arrives”.
“I asked her if she would come do a play, and I could be in it,” he
said. “‘Yes, of course, I’d love to do a play,’ she said. ‘But at the
moment, I’m getting a lot of film work. Of course it’s going to dry up,
then I’ll come do a play.’ That was 1985 - I’m still waiting.”
McKellen is a pro at the missionary position
A few years following Plenty, McKellen disclosed his sexuality publicly.
“When I came out as a gay man, it was expected by some gay activists
that my whole attitude to life would change, and I’d become a queer
artists and only do things with gay themes,” McKellen recalled. “I said:
‘No, no.’ Heterosexuality is far too interesting a phenomenon to be
ignored - and it would cut me off plays like Macbeth, Richard III and
King Lear.”
His first job after coming out was a role in the film Scandal, a 1989
thriller. The film opens with McKellen bedding actor Joanne Whalley.
“Not having enough experience, or indeed any experience in the sort
of sex that was required in this film, I consulted my friend who
actually drew some little matchstick figures of what goes on,” McKellen
said laughing. “I very quickly became an expert in the missionary
position.”
McKellen defied Donald Sutherland’s smoking ban on the set of Six Degrees of Separation
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Of
actor Stockard Channing, whom he worked with on the film adaptation of
the acclaimed play, Six Degrees of Separation, McKellen said: “Stockard
is what Tallulah Bankhead must have been like: wonderful, idiosyncratic
voice and a wry sense of humour, with inner strength and swagger. I
adore her.”
“The big guy in the movie was not me or Will Smith, but Donald
Sutherland, for whom I have a huge admiration for,” he continued. “He
has in his contract - when in the day it would have been thought rather
outrageous - that no actor or anybody working on a film that he was in,
was allowed to smoke. Well, Stockard and I both liked the odd cigarette,
so we used to go into the bathroom of her dressing room and have a
little elusive cigarette which we shared.”
McKellen doesn’t know how Judi Dench does it
“The work I’m most proud of was with Judi - on stage, not on film,”
said McKellen, fondly recalling their work together on a stage
production of Macbeth in “a small theater on Stratford Upon Avon.”
“If
you want to know what Lady Macbeth is all about, just find that,” he
said of her performance. “She gave an absolutely startling performance.”
“There’s nothing scary about acting with her,” he continued. “She
likes a joke as much as anything else. It’s a little unnerving to work
with because she doesn’t read the script until the read through with the
other actors. She just accepts from the director’s promise that it’s
something she might want to do.
You start working with Judi at a
disadvatage cause she doesn’t quite know whats going on. But three days
later, Judi leaves and the character arrives.
“I don’t know how she does it - and I don’t think she does. It’s magic, and she is magic.”
Ditto Maggie Smith
“She repels praise and attention with the odd cutting remark,” McKellen said of Smith.
To prove his point, McKellen recalled the time he attended the Oscars
with his Lord of the Rings crew. “I was wearing what I’m wearing now:
this green pounamu stone from New Zealand, which brings good luck.
That’s why I wear it. Maggie asked: ‘What’s that around your neck?’ I
told her it was a pounamu stone. She said: ‘Very good luck with your pounamu.’ At the end, everyone apart from me had won an Oscar. I bumped into Maggie, and she said: ‘Didn’t work, did it?’”
Smith played McKellen’s onscreen mother in Richard Loncraine’s 1995 film adaptation of Richard III.
“Maggie delivered a speech so brilliantly done we almost applauded on
the first take,” McKellen recalled of shooting with her. “Richard asked
to do it one more time. ‘Why?,’ she said. On the second take, she
pretended to slip. On the third take, she pretended to forget her lines.
She did this about six times and Richard eventually gave up and said:
‘Alright Maggie, we’ll use the first take!’”
He and Halle Berry are like brother and sister
“X-Men was a gay man’s delight, because it was full of the most
amazing divas,” McKellen said of the franchise, in which he played the
villainous mutant Magneto, before Michael Fassbender went on to assume
the role.
Of the large cast whom he worked with on the films, McKellen said he
bonded closest with Halle Berry, who played Storm. “I never saw Halle in
between movies, but we caught up each time as if we were brother and
sister,” McKellen said. “All sorts of confessions were made on either
side. We became chums.”
McKellen feels coming out has helped Ellen Page find her voice – on screen as well as off
Page appeared in McKellen’s third X-Men film, X-Men: The Last Stand,
as a fellow mutant. “The thing about Ellen was that she spoke very
quietly,” McKellen recalled. “Now I know that’s the fashion in movies
today - there’s far too much whispering going on in films. Ellen was
speaking very quietly for the benefit of the camera. I thought: ‘This
girl’s nervous! If she was a bit more confident, she’d be speaking a bit
louder maybe.’
“Lo and behold she comes out as gay woman,
and my God has she found her voice. Good on you, Ellen. From afar now, I
admire her. Wherever she is, she’s got my congratulations and love.”
McKellen was as baffled by The Da Vinci Code as the rest of us
“We clung to each other,” McKellen said of working with French actor
Audrey Tautou on Ron Howard’s blockbuster film adaptation of the
bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.
“Not because we were avoiding anybody on that set - Tom Hanks was
terribly friendly and very helpful to us all - but we did get together
and confided to each other that we couldn’t understand a word of the
plot. That was our little secret.”
After hitting a couple of commercial highs (“Dreamgirls,” “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn”) and one major artistic low (“The Fifth Estate”) in the major-studio trade, Bill Condon makes a welcome return to more intimate, character-based fare in “Mr. Holmes,” an elegiac portrait of the once-great detective as a senescent old man — arthritic of body and foggy of mind, yet unwilling to go gently into that good night. A graceful film that seems happy to proceed at roughly the pace of the honey that drips from its central character’s apiary, this faithful adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind” may disappoint audiences seeking a ripping good Sherlock Holmes mystery, but should delight genre buffs fond of such earlier revisionist Holmes yarns as “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” and “Young Sherlock Holmes,” and even attract some younger viewers curious to see the old guy from “Lord of the Rings” and “X-Men” (aka Ian McKellen) slip into the skin of the world’s most famous sleuth. The newly rehabilitated Miramax should see profitable arthouse returns from its planned 2015 release in partnership with Lionsgate subsidiary Roadside Attractions.
If Condon seems like particularly good casting here, it’s because, in its theme of faded celebrity, and its central dynamic of an eminence grise, a young protege and a stern housekeeper, “Mr. Holmes” carries more than a faint echo of “Gods and Monsters,” the director’s 1998 Oscar winner about the last days of “Frankenstein” director James Whale (also played by McKellen). And while “Mr. Holmes,” which was adapted by screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher, is ultimately a softer, sunnier film, it shares with its predecessor an acute sense of a dying man struggling to delineate fact from fantasy as he writes the final chapter of his life.
The Holmes we meet early on in “Mr. Holmes” is very much a fallen idol, aged 93 and long living in relative anonymity in a Sussex farm house, far from the prying eyes of the fans who once crowded the entrance to his Baker Street home, spurred on by the fictionalized Holmes tales published by his erstwhile partner, Dr. John Watson. The year is 1947, and Holmes whiles away his days tending to his bees and indulging another hobby, botany, under the watchful eye of his widowed cook, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), and her 14-year-old son, Roger (Milo Parker), who grooms himself in Holmes’ image. But as might be expected, Holmes’ hobbies are no mere passing fancies, but rather attempts at jogging his weary mind. Already showing the signs of short-term memory loss (call this “Still Sherlock” if you must), Holmes has taken to herbal remedies like royal jelly (hence the bees) and the more exotic prickly ash — an item rare enough to have occasioned a recent trip to Japan, where Holmes plucked it from the still-smoldering hillsides of Hiroshima.
Holmes longs to recover one memory in particular, that of the final case he worked on as a detective some 30 years earlier — a case involving an aggrieved husband, Thomas Kelmot (Patrick Kennedy); his depressive, childless wife (Hattie Morahan); and a strange musical instrument, a glass armonica, with possible occult powers. Above all, it was a case in which Holmes got something wrong — wrong enough to hang up his magnifying glass for good. If only he could remember what the hell it was. Now it is Holmes who is setting pen to paper in an effort to set the record straight, about his exploits in general and the glass armonica in particular, and to give himself peace of mind while he still has mind to appease.
While the good detective himself hobbles about with a cane, “Mr. Holmes” the movie glides smoothly back and forth across decades and continents as it follows these disparate plot strands through to their eminently logical conclusions. In Japan, Holmes is guided on his journey by the cheerful Mr. Umezaki (Hiroyuki Sanada), who claims to be a fellow herbalist but harbors his own ulterior motives that only gradually come to light. In the London of the past, Holmes tails the mysterious Mrs. Kelmot in an attempt to uncover her secrets. And in the Sussex of the present, busily writing away in his attic study, he struggles with each successive sentence to recall what exactly happened next. As in Cullin’s book (where “The Glass Armonicist” became a full-fledged novella-within-the-novel, complete with its own title page and chapter headings), the nesting of stories within stories creates a nifty hall-of-mirrors effect, climaxing in Holmes’ visit to a cinema screening a film adaptation of the armonica case, based on Watson’s bastardized account of it.
In truth, neither the armonica story nor Holmes’ Japanese sojourn is especially suspenseful or surprising, and might seem even less so were it not for the scrambled chronologies with which they unfold. Rather, the more vital subject of “Mr. Holmes” turns out to be our need for stories themselves and, in particular, the role of fiction as an escape from the pain and loss of everyday life — not least the compound horrors of two world wars. Only by his stubborn pursuit of the truth does Holmes come to understand the value of literary invention, from deerstalker hats and curved-stem pipes to our need for happy endings.
McKellen is predictably superb as Holmes, perhaps a touch too stentorious and Gandalf-y at times, but very touching in his sense of the old logician betrayed by his own logic. And Linney, in her third teaming with Condon (after “Kinsey” and “The Fifth Estate”), does beautifully understated work as a simple but proud woman trying to make sure she and her son have a future. The filmmaking itself is among Condon’s most elegant, with d.p. Tobias Schleisser’s widescreen lensing capturing the Sussex countryside in all its verdant splendor, and fine period detailing from production designer Martin Childs and costume designer Keith Madden. Editor Virginia Katz makes seamless braiding of the film’s multiple timelines. Composer Carter Burwell’s richly orchestrated score adds the perfect note of gentle mourning throughout.
Sir Ian McKellen is regarded as one of the finest British actors of all time, and Sherlock Holmes is seen as arguably the most beloved fictional British character ever created. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that molding the two together would make for cinematic gold. This teaser clip for Mr. Holmes suggests that’s exactly the case.
Sen-bloody-sational. This is our first footage of Sir Ian McKellen playing the 93-year-old incarnation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s adored literary creation, and it seems like, even though portraying such a besotted character usually comes with a heavy burden, The Lord Of The Rings and X-Men actor has taken to the role with ease.
McKellen looks like he has slightly altered his appearance to portray Holmes. Not only does his nose look a bit more bulbous than usual, he has greased back his hair and made his eyes smaller too. It’s safe to assume that McKellen won’t let these prosthetics and alterations overwhelm his performance, though (like, in my opinion Steve Carell did in Foxcatcher). Even in this brief clip it is apparent that McKellen had brought his usual mannerisms to his performance of Sherlock Holmes, while it also looks as though he’s doffed his cap to the previous actors who have played the role, as well as the different illustrations that have been created of the iconic figure too.
As you may have noticed, Ian McKellen is playing an aged version of Sherlock Holmes in Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, which is based on the 2005 novel A Slight Trick Of The Mind. The film is set in 1947 and it revolves around a long-retired Sherlock Holmes, who is living with his housekeeper, Mrs. Munro, and her young son, Roger. Now over 90 years old, Holmes is trying to write journals about his life while also looking after his collection of bees and dealing with his ailing mind. However, the film won’t just follow the pensioner Sherlock around. It will also delve back into his past and we will see him aged 49, when he was at the height of his success and at the peak of his powers living on Baker Street.
Mr. Holmes also stars Laura Linney, who will portray Mrs Munro, Roger Allam, and Hattie Morahan - but clearly the most appealing aspect of the film is the thought of Ian McKellen portraying the character at two, maybe even three, different stages of his life. Having an actor of McKellen’s ilk tackle such a deeply complex and adored role, which has already been terrifically played by dozens of actors, and try to make it stand-out amongst the others is the recipe for greatness. We’ll get our first inkling of whether McKellen has done just that when Mr. Holmes debuts out of competition at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in the next few days.
The British Consulate General in New York now proudly displays photographs taken in the 1960s of The Beatles and Sir Ian McKellen.
Sir Ian poses with the portrait taken by Michael Peto.
On Thursday, 6 February 2014, the University of Dundee presented the British Consulate General New York with two photographs taken by the Hungarian-born photographer Michael Peto (1908-1970).
Making the presentation extra special was the presence of one of Britain’s greatest actors and one of Peto’s portrait subjects, Sir Ian McKellen. Sir Ian reflected on his life when the photograph was taken in 1969. He thanked the British Council for helping him travel to the US as a young actor and expressed pride in the UK government’s stance on LGBT rights. Reflecting on the time that the Beatles portrait was taken in 1965, he joked that he made it to the US before the Beatles did.
From left to right: Sir Ian McKellen, Professor Pete Downes, Vice Chancellor of the University of Dundee, and Deputy Consul General Nick Astbury.
Professor Pete Downes, Vice Chancellor of the University of Dundee, said: “When we look at Michael Peto’s photographs of the 1950s and 1960s we are transported back to a time when artists and musicians experimented, challenged and created work that went on to carve out a global reputation for Britain. It gives me enormous pleasure to present the photographs of Sir Ian McKellen and The Beatles from the University of Dundee’s Peto Collection to the British Consulate in New York. I hope they will bring many years of enjoyment to staff and visitors alike.”
Deputy Consul General Nick Astbury commented that “the timing of this generous gift from the University of Dundee couldn’t be more perfect. We are lucky to have Sir Ian in New York and here with us today as he is currently performing on Broadway, and February 7 marks the day that The Beatles first arrived in New York.”
The other donated portrait is of The Beatles at a press conference after the announcement of their MBEs in 1965.
These and other photographs by Peto were recently displayed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in an exhibition showcasing his portraits of performances and performers in Britain during the 1950s and 60s. They are now on display alongside the British Council Art Collection in the consulate’s main event space.
Sir Ian showed off his tie, in the Macbeth tartan print.
Facts are more reliable than fiction, thinks the great Sherlock Holmes in his dotage, unaware that he is himself a fiction, on the verge of erasure.
Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in Mr Holmes. Photo: Giles Keyte
It is 1947 and Holmes (Ian McKellen) is 93, living in obscurity on the Sussex coast. Dr Watson has long since left to marry. The stout housekeeper, Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) takes cares of his daily needs, while nursing her own bereavement. Two wars have left their marks. Her 10-year-old son Roger (Milo Parker) is all she has – and he thinks she's a bit thick.
Part of the film is the love story between man and boy, but it is not steeped in treacle. Roger is clever and fascinated by the fame and secrets of Mr Holmes, whose attic study is off-limits. The gruff Holmes likes his boldness, and his hard edge of intellect. He reminds Sherlock of himself. Both he and the boy are capable of being beastly towards "Mrs M". She worries about their friendship, which forms around Sherlock's beehives. Roger helps him to make royal jelly, from the secretions that worker bees use to create queens.
The second layer is about the great man's attempt to write the true story of his last case, before he loses his faculties. The royal jelly is supposed to slow the loss of memory. Sherlock is disappearing. His mind is fogging, and that is all he had ever been able to rely on. He wants to record the case that made him retire – but the facts have become unreliable. Could irony be any more cruel?
Ian McKellen and Milo Parker in the film Mr Holmes. Photo: Giles Keyte
There was a man, Thomas Kelmot (Patrick Kennedy), who wanted Sherlock to follow his wife, Ann (Hattie Morahan). This was 1919 and she was troubled by the loss of two pregnancies. Sherlock knows he did something wrong, but what? He must set it down before he dies, or what has it all been for? A series of unreliable fictions by Dr Watson? He never wore a deer-stalker cap, nor smoked a pipe. The real Sherlock wishes to make himself concrete before he dies, with one final act of will.
This is perhaps close to a perfect story – a gentle suspense, surrounded by deep emotion. The film is based on a novel by the American writer Mitch Cullin. A Slight Trick of the Mind came out in 2005, and the film is a close adaptation, by the American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, known for his screenplays based on historical characters (Casanova, The Duchess, Stage Beauty).
The director, Bill Condon, is known for subtle adaptations of "true" stories – Dreamgirls, Kinsey, and Gods and Monsters, for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay in 1998. That film is almost a companion piece to this one: Ian McKellen played the gay filmmaker James Whale at the end of his days, trying to come to terms with his memories, falling in love with his hunky pool man (Brendan Fraser), as his housekeeper (Lynn Redgrave) disapproved. The new film has no truck with sexuality, of course, although the idea that Sherlock is gay is surely part of the understorey, both in the writing and in McKellen's magnificent performance. That's hardly new – every Sherlock since Basil Rathbone has had a touch of ambiguity.
Condon, an American, makes this feel like a true English story – high praise, in the circumstances. The adaptation is lush, the pace measured. The countryside looks like the war never happened, although war is one of the themes. Holmes has recently visited Hiroshima, seeing the destruction at first hand. The world has changed around him. All the intellect in the world cannot make much sense of that. Fiction, in the end, may offer more comfort.
