Top 60 Ian Mckellen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Try and understand what part you have to play in the world in which you live. There’s more to life than you know and it’s all happening out there. Discover what part you can play and then go for it.”

— Ian Mckellen

2. “I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.”

— Ian Mckellen

3. “Acting is no longer about lying. It’s now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.”

— Ian Mckellen

4. “Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you’re playing through your own experience – so we’re all different.”

— Ian Mckellen

5. “The audience’s expectations are ever-present.”

— Ian Mckellen

6. “That was the big effect Lord of the Rings had on me. It was discovering New Zealand. And even more precious were the people- not at all like the Australians.”

— Ian Mckellen

7. “I love the Broadway audiences, who relish live drama and don’t hesitate to display their enthusiasm.”

— Ian Mckellen

8. “It’s only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous.”

— Ian Mckellen

9. “In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.”

— Ian Mckellen

10. “Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel.”

— Ian Mckellen

11. “I can’t take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I’ll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.”

— Ian Mckellen

12. “I’m dead against the idea that you should try to “cure” people of being gay.”

— Ian Mckellen

13. “I am going around British secondary schools, as a gay man talking about my life, and encouraging schools to get rid of homophobic bullying and to care for their gay members of staff and their gay students.”

— Ian Mckellen

14. “I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.”

— Ian Mckellen

15. “It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier.”

— Ian Mckellen

16. “2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it’s flat. But 3D isn’t. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it’s ideal, I think.”

— Ian Mckellen

17. “It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can’t do anything about it, it’s all done and dusted.”

— Ian Mckellen

18. “In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn’t in the house last night, the designer wasn’t there, the author’s dead. It’s just us and the audience.”

— Ian Mckellen

19. “A few years ago, a friend said to me: “You do realize, Ian, when X-Men and Lord of the Rings come out, your life will totally change?” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he was right. My life has totally changed – but in a good way. Unbeknownst to me, it’s given me a lot more confidence.”

— Ian Mckellen

20. “If you’ve got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed – I’ve just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.”

— Ian Mckellen

21. “No one needs to feel sorry for me or anyone else who has fallen victim to success.”

— Ian Mckellen

22. “I’ve played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn’t a very helpful attitude to have if you’re about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.”

— Ian Mckellen

23. “Some directors don’t tell you that it’s not your fault, so you get increasingly depressed that you’re not delivering what’s required, and then you discover it’s not you at all, it’s something in the background that’s out of focus.”

— Ian Mckellen

24. “I’m not experienced enough, or certain enough of my acting on the screen to say to a director, “You are wrong, I am right. I will only do it this way.” I could never feel that, I wish I could be absolutely certain. But on the stage, it’s different. I know where I am on the stage.”

— Ian Mckellen

25. “Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone’s aware that the camera doesn’t.”

— Ian Mckellen

26. “When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that – in real life – I wasn’t doing.”

— Ian Mckellen

27. “I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, ‘Do you need help, brother?’ And $1 fell into my hat!”

— Ian Mckellen

28. “You would be surprised how many directors don’t know what they want. They might not know what they want until they see it, they might know what they want but no idea how to get it out of the actor, then you’ve both got a problem.”

— Ian Mckellen

29. “Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I’ve ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.”

— Ian Mckellen

30. “Why live outside the US? Do you want health care or safe food products or democracy or something? They’re all overrated. Stay for the excellent cable TV.”

— Ian Mckellen

31. “I tend to discourage people from calling me ‘Sir Ian,’ because I don’t like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you’re writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They’re impressed by these things.”

— Ian Mckellen

32. “Journalists often ask me: “Aren’t you sorry that after all the work you’ve done, you’re best known as Magneto and Gandalf?” But that’s what I’ve always wanted – not to be known as myself. I want to draw attention to the characters.”

— Ian Mckellen

33. “To know you are in the company with people who love and care for each other, as well as for whatever they are working on, is almost essential.”

— Ian Mckellen

34. “I think the point to be understood is that we’re all different. I’ve never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn’t go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, ‘This is the way you should act.’”

— Ian Mckellen

35. “Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It’s a short play, it’s an exciting play, it’s easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.”

— Ian Mckellen

36. “Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef – but that’s only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn’t ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.”

— Ian Mckellen

37. “That’s the imagination that happens in the theater. That imagination is translated in film by the film magicians and all the technology.”

— Ian Mckellen

38. “If you’re sounding right, you’re probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right – if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, ‘do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were really landed on it.’”

— Ian Mckellen

39. “It may be my rather puritanical upbringing at odds with my inborn laziness that makes me feel guilty at the end of the day, unless I am able to point at some achievement. But this need be no more impressive than cooking a meal or going for a long walk.”

— Ian Mckellen

40. “For old actors, just remember that inside you’re only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you’ve forgotten how to do what kids know automatically.”

— Ian Mckellen

41. “I often thought my gravestone would say, ‘Here lies Gandalf. He came out,’”

— Ian Mckellen

42. “When you’re on stage with an audience, the director’s nowhere to be seen. He’s onto the next job.”

— Ian Mckellen

43. “I have never wanted to be typecast, one of those actors who plays a variation on a one-note theme. So just as I enjoy playing a wide variety of characters, from good to bad to ugly to cute – so I have enjoyed of late working in film and television, as well as in theatres of various sizes and shapes.”

— Ian Mckellen

44. “Success in the movies has pushed me to places I didn’t know I was allowed to go.”

— Ian Mckellen

45. “Television can take anything. It can take the most exaggerated of storytelling forms.”

— Ian Mckellen

46. “There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I’ve got better as an actor. I’ve learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it.”

— Ian Mckellen

47. “All other areas of my life, I’m hopeless. I can’t even be certain how to boil an egg.”

— Ian Mckellen

48. “If I was on a march at the moment I would be saying to everyone: Be honest with each other. Admit there are limitless possibilities in relationships, and love as many people as you can in whatever way you want, and get rid of your inhibitions, and we’ll all be happy.”

— Ian Mckellen

49. “My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out.”

— Ian Mckellen

50. “I am very lucky to be man because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It’s much more difficult.”

— Ian Mckellen