:00:23. > :00:29.Welcome to a special edition of hardtop. I am Stephen Sackur and
:00:30. > :00:32.today I am joined by an audience here that the BBC Radio Sheffield.
:00:33. > :00:40.To celebrate 20 years of HARDtalk interviews. -- Stephen Sackur. Who
:00:41. > :00:44.better to have on our birthday than Sir Ian McKellen. Whether you think
:00:45. > :00:48.of Immers Richard III or Gandalf, you will that he has won hearts and
:00:49. > :00:55.accolades around the world. Not just for decades of work on screen but
:00:56. > :01:04.his passion of public accuracy, particularly on the issue of gay
:01:05. > :01:15.rights. Please give a warm welcome to Ian McKellen.
:01:16. > :01:26.That was quite welcome. Ian McKellen, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank
:01:27. > :01:32.you. There's a lot to talk about both personal and in terms of your
:01:33. > :01:36.campaigning. But there are very few actors with the diversity you have
:01:37. > :01:42.offered your audiences, from the great Shakespearean roles to comic
:01:43. > :01:47.book characters in X-Men. Is there a common thread through everything you
:01:48. > :01:54.have done? The common thread is there is no common thread. There is
:01:55. > :02:03.a variety. What I have always admired in my youth was people
:02:04. > :02:07.playing different salts of parts in different environments. I was proud
:02:08. > :02:13.of having played with or 20, which is a drag role in a British
:02:14. > :02:22.Christmas entertainment, or pantomime. I was as proud of that as
:02:23. > :02:28.I was playing King Lear. You did exploring -- you did a show
:02:29. > :02:33.exploring your own recent ancestry. With your mother, and she died when
:02:34. > :02:38.you're very young, just 12, you said you thought she would not mind if
:02:39. > :02:47.you were an actor because she gave -- she thought that actors get so
:02:48. > :02:53.much entertainment to people. A very early memory is being bathed by my
:02:54. > :03:03.mother. Only once a week, actually! During which, son one would expect
:03:04. > :03:06.more! It was the war. As she was watching me, she would tell me the
:03:07. > :03:15.story of the radio programme she had heard the night before after I had
:03:16. > :03:20.gone to bed. As a family, we went out more to the theatre than the
:03:21. > :03:27.cinema. I went with them at an early age and was intrigued and excited to
:03:28. > :03:31.think that it was possible for me to discover how it was done. It being
:03:32. > :03:35.all that scenery, how you learned your lines, what happened behind the
:03:36. > :03:41.door on the stage. Backstage is still the most thrilling place. As
:03:42. > :03:43.we came out to me the audience, that Johnny backstage, you said you're
:03:44. > :03:56.getting nervous, I was getting excited. What about you set your --
:03:57. > :04:01.your sexuality and choices. When you were a years, being gay to be a
:04:02. > :04:06.criminal offence. As remains in many countries around the world, yes. Was
:04:07. > :04:10.at the space where you could find a way to feel much more yourself, to
:04:11. > :04:16.express your identity in the way you could not outside the theatre? That
:04:17. > :04:22.is exactly the point. It was illegal for me to declare my lover do
:04:23. > :04:29.anything about it. In the theatre, or at least standing on the stage, I
:04:30. > :04:33.could disguise it and, speaking someone else's words, have an
:04:34. > :04:37.emotional freedom I was not allowed in my own life. Many professional
:04:38. > :04:44.actors are gay for the same reasons that I took up the job. Because I
:04:45. > :04:49.want to explore this campaigning you have chosen to do on the gay rights
:04:50. > :04:54.issue, I think it is important to ask you why, even after
:04:55. > :05:02.homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, 8022 years to come out
:05:03. > :05:10.publicly. -- it took you 22 years. Am not proud of it. When you hear me
:05:11. > :05:14.going on and on and my friends say, will you stop talking about being
:05:15. > :05:19.gay? I do it because for so many years I felt I could not. I am doing
:05:20. > :05:25.it on behalf of other kids like me, growing up in a similar situation,
:05:26. > :05:29.perhaps because of the attitudes of their family or socially well they
:05:30. > :05:35.live. I do it on their behalf. So why did it take so long? I was not
:05:36. > :05:38.the only one who took so long. I was the second person ever to be
:05:39. > :05:45.knighted who was openly gave. The first was Angus Wilson, the novels.
:05:46. > :05:49.There were great restrictions, even after the law was gradually
:05:50. > :05:52.changing. Gay people were meant to stay in their place and that place
:05:53. > :05:56.probably was what we call the closet. Which was not announcing
:05:57. > :06:02.yourself and drawing attention to yourself. It did mean you were
:06:03. > :06:07.still, as your acting career really took off through the 1970s and 1980s
:06:08. > :06:08.and you are getting more than one important roles and beginning to
:06:09. > :06:15.and you are getting more than one make that transition, from stage and
:06:16. > :06:22.adding screen to that, you were bottling a lot of things up. I was.
:06:23. > :06:26.I wonder, looking back, whether you feel you would have been a better
:06:27. > :06:34.actor younger if you had been more public about your identity. I think,
:06:35. > :06:39.probably. It is certainly true of me and practically every person I know
:06:40. > :06:42.in this industry who declared the sexuality that life becomes better
:06:43. > :06:49.in every possible way once you're honest. And that affects your work.
:06:50. > :06:52.And my work, which is dealing with honesty and truth about human
:06:53. > :06:59.nature, was likely to be more convincing. That is what friends and
:07:00. > :07:03.colleagues said. Overnight, my acting took on a depth that had not
:07:04. > :07:09.happened before because I am the longer disguising. I am now
:07:10. > :07:14.revealing. It is interesting that you say that. Because when one looks
:07:15. > :07:17.in your transition from being one of the greats in the theatre to also
:07:18. > :07:21.becoming an extraordinarily successful on-screen actor, in some
:07:22. > :07:26.ways, it came quite late in your career. It came after I came out.
:07:27. > :07:36.After I said I was gay, suddenly this film working my way! -- work
:07:37. > :07:40.came my way. But just in terms of technique as much as anything, and
:07:41. > :07:44.how you express yourself, you have talked about the way in which,
:07:45. > :07:50.earlier in your career, you have actually felt, looking back, that
:07:51. > :07:55.you were not an actor who was appropriate for the movies. Why? If
:07:56. > :07:58.you're playing in a large theatre, 2000 people, you have a
:07:59. > :08:03.responsibility, I think, to make sure that they can all year and see
:08:04. > :08:06.you and understand what you're up to. That can involve, if you're
:08:07. > :08:14.going to reach an audience, way up there, probably a few hand gestures
:08:15. > :08:18.and open expression. Danielle, will the critics normally sit, it does
:08:19. > :08:24.not seem very convincing. It is a problem. How do you act in a large
:08:25. > :08:27.theatre? I elected to make it big rather than cut those people out.
:08:28. > :08:32.That is where I used to sit and will the students, those who do not have
:08:33. > :08:40.much money, would sit. That is where my friends are. But it changed for
:08:41. > :08:46.me when I did a production of Macbeth, still available on video...
:08:47. > :08:54.LAUGHTER with Judi Dench, the greatest river bay. In a tiny
:08:55. > :09:01.theatre. -- the great is that there will ever be. The comment on acting
:09:02. > :09:07.the part was it was inappropriate. You had to be, exist. It meant
:09:08. > :09:11.conversation rather than declaration and rhetoric. Once I had done that,
:09:12. > :09:15.I never really wanted to work in a big theatre again. I then started to
:09:16. > :09:19.work in the smallest fields above all, which is cinema, will the
:09:20. > :09:28.camera can be close to you than anybody. There have been critics,
:09:29. > :09:33.perhaps one of the most famous, was fellow actor Richard Harris. Elon to
:09:34. > :09:40.you and Derek Jacobi together. And Kenneth Branagh. I was in good
:09:41. > :09:49.company. He said, these guys are technically brilliant but
:09:50. > :09:55.passionless. Yes. Nonsense. When he died, he played Dumbledore, the
:09:56. > :10:00.wizard. I played the real wizard! You're in a different franchise! But
:10:01. > :10:04.when they called me up and said, would I be interested in being in
:10:05. > :10:10.the Harry Potter films, they do not say what part. I worked out what
:10:11. > :10:15.they were thinking and I couldn't. I could not take over part from an
:10:16. > :10:18.actor who I knew did not approve of me. Interesting. You could have been
:10:19. > :10:24.Dumbledore? Sometimes, when I see the posters of
:10:25. > :10:32.Michael Gambon, who plays Dumbledore, I think, some things, it
:10:33. > :10:37.is me! We get asked for each other's autograph. We have to get the
:10:38. > :10:44.wizards. Gandalf became you, you begin to Gandalf -- became Gandalf.
:10:45. > :10:51.It was an extraordinary bonding of character and actor. You chose, not
:10:52. > :10:55.so long ago, that when you finally leave this mortal coil, your
:10:56. > :11:03.gravestone will simply say, played Gandalf, came out. Here lies
:11:04. > :11:08.Gandalf. Yes, that would do, wouldn't it? It is the two sides of
:11:09. > :11:20.my life which have meant a great deal to me. Being a famous -- as
:11:21. > :11:25.famous as the actor playing Gandalf was bound to be, looking back on it,
:11:26. > :11:30.and I don't begrudge it at all, but I am now in contact with allsorts of
:11:31. > :11:32.people, particularly very young people all over the world who I
:11:33. > :11:36.could not possibly have known about. They have let me into their lives,
:11:37. > :11:41.to an extent. I visit schools quite a lot to talk about gay issues but I
:11:42. > :11:45.am welcome because it is Gandalf. And they give me the time of day,
:11:46. > :11:53.which they probably would not if some old geezer strolled into the
:11:54. > :11:59.classroom. It is a very, very personal, wonderful thing. Which I
:12:00. > :12:02.don't feel about other parts. You do not feel that diminishes some of the
:12:03. > :12:14.other, some might say, more profound parts and plays and films? No.
:12:15. > :12:19.Because it is true. The text of JRR Tolkien's dialogue is not up to
:12:20. > :12:24.Shakespeare. Nor is it trying to be. It is a different sort of story
:12:25. > :12:32.telling. But to be part of the culture, which is what Gandalf has
:12:33. > :12:37.always been. Gandalf the president was in LA but in before the films
:12:38. > :12:39.were made. To be able to impersonate this character, already in the
:12:40. > :12:44.zeitgeist and meant a great deal as an example of how to behave in the
:12:45. > :12:54.world, which is so young people respond to him, what a privilege.
:12:55. > :13:01.You have done a lot of Tosh, as well. I wondered how long it would
:13:02. > :13:15.be! Before we got onto HARDtalk. Well, X-Men... X-Men is not Tosh. Is
:13:16. > :13:22.there a role you have turned over being too puerile silly? About once
:13:23. > :13:26.a week. No, no, I have said it many times. X-Men is a discussion in a
:13:27. > :13:32.very popular form of what the Civil Rights movement does. It is not true
:13:33. > :13:39.of Superman and those guys, those weren't so suddenly become super men
:13:40. > :13:46.by changing their underwear, it seems to me. What other Tosh? I'm
:13:47. > :13:52.thinking, I probably have! Maybe I am picking away at the wrong thing,
:13:53. > :14:02.but it seems to me there is an insecurity in acting. It is a thing
:14:03. > :14:06.that it is a very insecure profession. You're great, great
:14:07. > :14:10.uncle died in the workers. I wonder whether that insecurity, even today,
:14:11. > :14:18.is still a part of your make-up. Well, I am excluding narrowly lucky
:14:19. > :14:22.as an actor from that point of view. I have never been out of work. I
:14:23. > :14:25.have taken work that other actors of my standing and generation might not
:14:26. > :14:31.have done because it was not much money involved Beremend going away
:14:32. > :14:41.from home. But whether you're working on not working, -- or not
:14:42. > :14:47.working, to feel part of a group, a tribe of people who know that if I
:14:48. > :14:51.play is working well, the relationship between New Orleans and
:14:52. > :14:58.performance -- between the audience and performer 's... And the writer,
:14:59. > :15:02.he might be long dead, provide something magical. Stories are what
:15:03. > :15:05.we as human beings are good at doing. We cannot manage without
:15:06. > :15:10.stories. When it happens in the theatre and works well, even if you
:15:11. > :15:13.are going to be will to work for the rest of the year, you are blessed.
:15:14. > :15:19.And you're doing it in the company of people who share excitement. It
:15:20. > :15:24.is a fantastic job. There is an irony. We have touched on it
:15:25. > :15:28.already. After you came out, your career took off. Particularly in the
:15:29. > :15:37.movies. But there has never been and openly gay winner of Best actor at
:15:38. > :15:41.the Oscars. No. The University of Southern California did an analysis
:15:42. > :15:47.of the top 100 movies in 2015. The latest. And they found that 82 of
:15:48. > :15:57.those top 100 movies do not depict a single LGBT speaking or named
:15:58. > :16:05.character. Yes. We had that hash tag Oscars saw white. Do we need a hash
:16:06. > :16:12.tag Oscars so straight? You should not look to Hollywood for social
:16:13. > :16:19.advance. LAUGHTER. I do not mean to be flippant, but
:16:20. > :16:23.you looked to Hollywood for financial advice. Does that mean you
:16:24. > :16:29.have to hold your nose? No, you don't have to. You just go to
:16:30. > :16:36.Hollywood. You do your work somewhere else. -- you just don't go
:16:37. > :16:41.to Hollywood. The movies that we all love and relish our fantasy. That is
:16:42. > :16:43.why we love them. It is not the real world. There are plenty of wonderful
:16:44. > :16:47.films being made about the real world but they do not come out of
:16:48. > :16:53.what we think of as traditionally the Hollywood machine. Geena Davis,
:16:54. > :16:55.for example, and a bunch of women actors and directors are really
:16:56. > :17:01.trying to change the way that women are depicted on the big screen.
:17:02. > :17:04.Particularly in Hollywood. We now get onto the campaigning work you
:17:05. > :17:10.do. This part of your campaigning work to try and change the way that
:17:11. > :17:13.film as a business works? No. My campaigning is all about allowing
:17:14. > :17:22.people to be themselves, whatever label they put on themselves. Can we
:17:23. > :17:28.really grumble when, finally, it was agreed that Moonlight should be the
:17:29. > :17:35.Oscar film of the year, with a strong gay storyline? That comes out
:17:36. > :17:38.of gay people, and in that case, black people, wanting to tell a
:17:39. > :17:44.story to which the person responded. That people should be given the
:17:45. > :17:47.freedom to do that. But the campaign to say, right, we must employ more
:17:48. > :17:55.openly gay actors... I don't think that we get you very far. Talking
:17:56. > :17:58.about going very far, you have become very active internationally
:17:59. > :18:01.with your gay rights campaigning. I know that you have been in Russia
:18:02. > :18:11.recently. I also know that you're about to go to Turkey. Both of these
:18:12. > :18:14.places strike me as places where you will not be welcome and that, you
:18:15. > :18:26.could be in some danger. It did feel like that in Russia. It was in the
:18:27. > :18:31.city of Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest gay men to ever come out of
:18:32. > :18:35.Russia, and the other politicians are homophobic. It means they have a
:18:36. > :18:44.fair distrust of gay people. As a visitor, trying to be myself, I have
:18:45. > :18:54.to be protected. With bodyguards? Oh, yes. What difference do you feel
:18:55. > :18:57.you can make, as an outsider, albeit a celebrated famous one, coming into
:18:58. > :18:59.different countries with their own bodies and culture and lecturing
:19:00. > :19:08.them about the way they should organise their society and culture?
:19:09. > :19:15.How can that make a difference? I do feel myself to be English, probably
:19:16. > :19:23.first, then British, then European and then internationalist. When you
:19:24. > :19:28.come out, you join a tribe that is all over the world. And I feel I
:19:29. > :19:32.know what it is like to be pressed in Russia because I remember what it
:19:33. > :19:36.used to be like here. I do have a story to tell, which is relevant.
:19:37. > :19:41.And the people, really, that I contact when I go abroad, if I am
:19:42. > :19:45.allowed, other local people who are trying, in their own way, to make
:19:46. > :19:50.their own lives easier. The LGBT people of Russia, of whom there are
:19:51. > :19:56.millions. But very few are brave enough to express their
:19:57. > :20:04.individuality and be honest. And I just know that they are very
:20:05. > :20:08.grateful when you drive and you say, it'll probably be all right. Keep at
:20:09. > :20:15.it, keep fighting. That is all I am really doing. Occasionally, you can
:20:16. > :20:22.point out the facts that have got lost. In India, and Kenya, they have
:20:23. > :20:27.laws which the British Empire put in place. Anti-gay laws. When we
:20:28. > :20:31.withdrew, we lefties bad laws behind. Now these local laws are
:20:32. > :20:40.being defended by the Indians and Kenyons and they say, don't come to
:20:41. > :20:46.us with your foreign idea. I want to say, no, I want to take this away
:20:47. > :20:52.which we should have taken away when you left your country. We're almost
:20:53. > :20:56.out of time. I want to bring it back from the public Ian McKellen to the
:20:57. > :21:02.Private and deeply personal Ian McKellen. It seems to me that you
:21:03. > :21:06.have always guarded your own private life. I know that at one point, you
:21:07. > :21:13.decide to write another biography. He took the money, the advance. I
:21:14. > :21:17.didn't. It was offered. You added it back and never actually got it. The
:21:18. > :21:22.point is, you had second thoughts. Why? I don't think there is anything
:21:23. > :21:28.remarkable about my private life, from what I can observe. There is a
:21:29. > :21:36.clear distinction between saying, I am what I am and saying, this is
:21:37. > :21:40.what I do. I do not want to start talking about my relationships. That
:21:41. > :21:44.is not fair, unless the other person is with me talking about it as well.
:21:45. > :21:48.But as we autobiography is a very misleading. You get one side of the
:21:49. > :21:55.story. But on the principle, only issue, I can be bold. And knowing
:21:56. > :22:02.that I am in the right, standing on the moral high ground, that is
:22:03. > :22:06.easier. To be nosy, I will dig a bit more into the personal. You live in
:22:07. > :22:10.a country where things have changed and off a lot in your lifetime.
:22:11. > :22:14.Frankly, if you well in your 20s or 30s now, you could, in a way that
:22:15. > :22:17.you could not have back then, you could have considered, you know,
:22:18. > :22:23.first of all, gay marriage. You could easily have had children, lots
:22:24. > :22:28.of children, whatever. You have talked about being the last of Ian
:22:29. > :22:35.McKellens. And they send some things of melancholy -- a sense of
:22:36. > :22:41.melancholy in being the last of your line. Do you think, if you had your
:22:42. > :22:46.life over, you would have liked all of that? The kids? I used to think
:22:47. > :22:55.the best thing about being gay was that you do not have to have kids. I
:22:56. > :22:58.mean, how many decent parents are there? The misery of the world comes
:22:59. > :23:05.because people had dreadful upbringing. It seems to me. So I
:23:06. > :23:12.feel like I escape that. Also, I am extremely selfish. I can devote all
:23:13. > :23:19.my time to my career and do things around it without rushing back to
:23:20. > :23:23.change the nappies are going on holiday with all the kids are all
:23:24. > :23:36.that. Hole-mac, how ghastly it sounds! -- oh. But the thrill of my
:23:37. > :23:39.life and the possibility of a changing in the future is to see
:23:40. > :23:43.kids in school, and then talking about teenagers, who say, do not
:23:44. > :23:48.come here and talk about being gay. You are only talking about being gay
:23:49. > :23:53.because, for years, people have pointed that UN said you're queer.
:23:54. > :23:58.You give yourself a more sympathetic label. We do not want labels. We do
:23:59. > :24:02.not know if we are gay or not. We might be straight one day, gave an
:24:03. > :24:11.excellent and I think, that is the future. -- and gave the next.
:24:12. > :24:42.Thank you for talking to us. So Ian McKellen. -- Sir Ian McKellen.
:24:43. > :24:49.Good morning. We have some rain working its way in from the West.
:24:50. > :24:55.Before we take a look at that, let's look at some of the highlights of
:24:56. > :24:57.Monday. A beautiful Weather Watchers pictures sent in from Cambridge I. A