Sir Ian McKellen, Actor HARDtalk

Welcome to a special edition of hardtop. I am Stephen Sackur and

today I am joined by an audience here that the BBC Radio Sheffield.

To celebrate 20 years of HARDtalk interviews. -- Stephen Sackur. Who

better to have on our birthday than Sir Ian McKellen. Whether you think

of Immers Richard III or Gandalf, you will that he has won hearts and

accolades around the world. Not just for decades of work on screen but

his passion of public accuracy, particularly on the issue of gay

rights. Please give a warm welcome to Ian McKellen.

That was quite welcome. Ian McKellen, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank

you. There's a lot to talk about both personal and in terms of your

campaigning. But there are very few actors with the diversity you have

offered your audiences, from the great Shakespearean roles to comic

book characters in X-Men. Is there a common thread through everything you

have done? The common thread is there is no common thread. There is

a variety. What I have always admired in my youth was people

playing different salts of parts in different environments. I was proud

of having played with or 20, which is a drag role in a British

Christmas entertainment, or pantomime. I was as proud of that as

I was playing King Lear. You did exploring -- you did a show

exploring your own recent ancestry. With your mother, and she died when

you're very young, just 12, you said you thought she would not mind if

you were an actor because she gave -- she thought that actors get so

much entertainment to people. A very early memory is being bathed by my

mother. Only once a week, actually! During which, son one would expect

more! It was the war. As she was watching me, she would tell me the

story of the radio programme she had heard the night before after I had

gone to bed. As a family, we went out more to the theatre than the

cinema. I went with them at an early age and was intrigued and excited to

think that it was possible for me to discover how it was done. It being

all that scenery, how you learned your lines, what happened behind the

door on the stage. Backstage is still the most thrilling place. As

we came out to me the audience, that Johnny backstage, you said you're

getting nervous, I was getting excited. What about you set your --

your sexuality and choices. When you were a years, being gay to be a

criminal offence. As remains in many countries around the world, yes. Was

at the space where you could find a way to feel much more yourself, to

express your identity in the way you could not outside the theatre? That

is exactly the point. It was illegal for me to declare my lover do

anything about it. In the theatre, or at least standing on the stage, I

could disguise it and, speaking someone else's words, have an

emotional freedom I was not allowed in my own life. Many professional

actors are gay for the same reasons that I took up the job. Because I

want to explore this campaigning you have chosen to do on the gay rights

issue, I think it is important to ask you why, even after

homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, 8022 years to come out

publicly. -- it took you 22 years. Am not proud of it. When you hear me

going on and on and my friends say, will you stop talking about being

gay? I do it because for so many years I felt I could not. I am doing

it on behalf of other kids like me, growing up in a similar situation,

perhaps because of the attitudes of their family or socially well they

live. I do it on their behalf. So why did it take so long? I was not

the only one who took so long. I was the second person ever to be

knighted who was openly gave. The first was Angus Wilson, the novels.

There were great restrictions, even after the law was gradually

changing. Gay people were meant to stay in their place and that place

probably was what we call the closet. Which was not announcing

yourself and drawing attention to yourself. It did mean you were

still, as your acting career really took off through the 1970s and 1980s

and you are getting more than one important roles and beginning to

and you are getting more than one make that transition, from stage and

adding screen to that, you were bottling a lot of things up. I was.

I wonder, looking back, whether you feel you would have been a better

actor younger if you had been more public about your identity. I think,

probably. It is certainly true of me and practically every person I know

in this industry who declared the sexuality that life becomes better

in every possible way once you're honest. And that affects your work.

And my work, which is dealing with honesty and truth about human

nature, was likely to be more convincing. That is what friends and

colleagues said. Overnight, my acting took on a depth that had not

happened before because I am the longer disguising. I am now

revealing. It is interesting that you say that. Because when one looks

in your transition from being one of the greats in the theatre to also

becoming an extraordinarily successful on-screen actor, in some

ways, it came quite late in your career. It came after I came out.

After I said I was gay, suddenly this film working my way! -- work

came my way. But just in terms of technique as much as anything, and

how you express yourself, you have talked about the way in which,

earlier in your career, you have actually felt, looking back, that

you were not an actor who was appropriate for the movies. Why? If

you're playing in a large theatre, 2000 people, you have a

responsibility, I think, to make sure that they can all year and see

you and understand what you're up to. That can involve, if you're

going to reach an audience, way up there, probably a few hand gestures

and open expression. Danielle, will the critics normally sit, it does

not seem very convincing. It is a problem. How do you act in a large

theatre? I elected to make it big rather than cut those people out.

That is where I used to sit and will the students, those who do not have

much money, would sit. That is where my friends are. But it changed for

me when I did a production of Macbeth, still available on video...

LAUGHTER with Judi Dench, the greatest river bay. In a tiny

theatre. -- the great is that there will ever be. The comment on acting

the part was it was inappropriate. You had to be, exist. It meant

conversation rather than declaration and rhetoric. Once I had done that,

I never really wanted to work in a big theatre again. I then started to

work in the smallest fields above all, which is cinema, will the

camera can be close to you than anybody. There have been critics,

perhaps one of the most famous, was fellow actor Richard Harris. Elon to

you and Derek Jacobi together. And Kenneth Branagh. I was in good

company. He said, these guys are technically brilliant but

passionless. Yes. Nonsense. When he died, he played Dumbledore, the

wizard. I played the real wizard! You're in a different franchise! But

when they called me up and said, would I be interested in being in

the Harry Potter films, they do not say what part. I worked out what

they were thinking and I couldn't. I could not take over part from an

actor who I knew did not approve of me. Interesting. You could have been

Dumbledore? Sometimes, when I see the posters of

Michael Gambon, who plays Dumbledore, I think, some things, it

is me! We get asked for each other's autograph. We have to get the

wizards. Gandalf became you, you begin to Gandalf -- became Gandalf.

It was an extraordinary bonding of character and actor. You chose, not

so long ago, that when you finally leave this mortal coil, your

gravestone will simply say, played Gandalf, came out. Here lies

Gandalf. Yes, that would do, wouldn't it? It is the two sides of

my life which have meant a great deal to me. Being a famous -- as

famous as the actor playing Gandalf was bound to be, looking back on it,

and I don't begrudge it at all, but I am now in contact with allsorts of

people, particularly very young people all over the world who I

could not possibly have known about. They have let me into their lives,

to an extent. I visit schools quite a lot to talk about gay issues but I

am welcome because it is Gandalf. And they give me the time of day,

which they probably would not if some old geezer strolled into the

classroom. It is a very, very personal, wonderful thing. Which I

don't feel about other parts. You do not feel that diminishes some of the

other, some might say, more profound parts and plays and films? No.

Because it is true. The text of JRR Tolkien's dialogue is not up to

Shakespeare. Nor is it trying to be. It is a different sort of story

telling. But to be part of the culture, which is what Gandalf has

always been. Gandalf the president was in LA but in before the films

were made. To be able to impersonate this character, already in the

zeitgeist and meant a great deal as an example of how to behave in the

world, which is so young people respond to him, what a privilege.

You have done a lot of Tosh, as well. I wondered how long it would

be! Before we got onto HARDtalk. Well, X-Men... X-Men is not Tosh. Is

there a role you have turned over being too puerile silly? About once

a week. No, no, I have said it many times. X-Men is a discussion in a

very popular form of what the Civil Rights movement does. It is not true

of Superman and those guys, those weren't so suddenly become super men

by changing their underwear, it seems to me. What other Tosh? I'm

thinking, I probably have! Maybe I am picking away at the wrong thing,

but it seems to me there is an insecurity in acting. It is a thing

that it is a very insecure profession. You're great, great

uncle died in the workers. I wonder whether that insecurity, even today,

is still a part of your make-up. Well, I am excluding narrowly lucky

as an actor from that point of view. I have never been out of work. I

have taken work that other actors of my standing and generation might not

have done because it was not much money involved Beremend going away

from home. But whether you're working on not working, -- or not

working, to feel part of a group, a tribe of people who know that if I

play is working well, the relationship between New Orleans and

performance -- between the audience and performer 's... And the writer,

he might be long dead, provide something magical. Stories are what

we as human beings are good at doing. We cannot manage without

stories. When it happens in the theatre and works well, even if you

are going to be will to work for the rest of the year, you are blessed.

And you're doing it in the company of people who share excitement. It

is a fantastic job. There is an irony. We have touched on it

already. After you came out, your career took off. Particularly in the

movies. But there has never been and openly gay winner of Best actor at

the Oscars. No. The University of Southern California did an analysis

of the top 100 movies in 2015. The latest. And they found that 82 of

those top 100 movies do not depict a single LGBT speaking or named

character. Yes. We had that hash tag Oscars saw white. Do we need a hash

tag Oscars so straight? You should not look to Hollywood for social

advance. LAUGHTER. I do not mean to be flippant, but

you looked to Hollywood for financial advice. Does that mean you

have to hold your nose? No, you don't have to. You just go to

Hollywood. You do your work somewhere else. -- you just don't go

to Hollywood. The movies that we all love and relish our fantasy. That is

why we love them. It is not the real world. There are plenty of wonderful

films being made about the real world but they do not come out of

what we think of as traditionally the Hollywood machine. Geena Davis,

for example, and a bunch of women actors and directors are really

trying to change the way that women are depicted on the big screen.

Particularly in Hollywood. We now get onto the campaigning work you

do. This part of your campaigning work to try and change the way that

film as a business works? No. My campaigning is all about allowing

people to be themselves, whatever label they put on themselves. Can we

really grumble when, finally, it was agreed that Moonlight should be the

Oscar film of the year, with a strong gay storyline? That comes out

of gay people, and in that case, black people, wanting to tell a

story to which the person responded. That people should be given the

freedom to do that. But the campaign to say, right, we must employ more

openly gay actors... I don't think that we get you very far. Talking

about going very far, you have become very active internationally

with your gay rights campaigning. I know that you have been in Russia

recently. I also know that you're about to go to Turkey. Both of these

places strike me as places where you will not be welcome and that, you

could be in some danger. It did feel like that in Russia. It was in the

city of Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest gay men to ever come out of

Russia, and the other politicians are homophobic. It means they have a

fair distrust of gay people. As a visitor, trying to be myself, I have

to be protected. With bodyguards? Oh, yes. What difference do you feel

you can make, as an outsider, albeit a celebrated famous one, coming into

different countries with their own bodies and culture and lecturing

them about the way they should organise their society and culture?

How can that make a difference? I do feel myself to be English, probably

first, then British, then European and then internationalist. When you

come out, you join a tribe that is all over the world. And I feel I

know what it is like to be pressed in Russia because I remember what it

used to be like here. I do have a story to tell, which is relevant.

And the people, really, that I contact when I go abroad, if I am

allowed, other local people who are trying, in their own way, to make

their own lives easier. The LGBT people of Russia, of whom there are

millions. But very few are brave enough to express their

individuality and be honest. And I just know that they are very

grateful when you drive and you say, it'll probably be all right. Keep at

it, keep fighting. That is all I am really doing. Occasionally, you can

point out the facts that have got lost. In India, and Kenya, they have

laws which the British Empire put in place. Anti-gay laws. When we

withdrew, we lefties bad laws behind. Now these local laws are

being defended by the Indians and Kenyons and they say, don't come to

us with your foreign idea. I want to say, no, I want to take this away

which we should have taken away when you left your country. We're almost

out of time. I want to bring it back from the public Ian McKellen to the

Private and deeply personal Ian McKellen. It seems to me that you

have always guarded your own private life. I know that at one point, you

decide to write another biography. He took the money, the advance. I

didn't. It was offered. You added it back and never actually got it. The

point is, you had second thoughts. Why? I don't think there is anything

remarkable about my private life, from what I can observe. There is a

clear distinction between saying, I am what I am and saying, this is

what I do. I do not want to start talking about my relationships. That

is not fair, unless the other person is with me talking about it as well.

But as we autobiography is a very misleading. You get one side of the

story. But on the principle, only issue, I can be bold. And knowing

that I am in the right, standing on the moral high ground, that is

easier. To be nosy, I will dig a bit more into the personal. You live in

a country where things have changed and off a lot in your lifetime.

Frankly, if you well in your 20s or 30s now, you could, in a way that

you could not have back then, you could have considered, you know,

first of all, gay marriage. You could easily have had children, lots

of children, whatever. You have talked about being the last of Ian

McKellens. And they send some things of melancholy -- a sense of

melancholy in being the last of your line. Do you think, if you had your

life over, you would have liked all of that? The kids? I used to think

the best thing about being gay was that you do not have to have kids. I

mean, how many decent parents are there? The misery of the world comes

because people had dreadful upbringing. It seems to me. So I

feel like I escape that. Also, I am extremely selfish. I can devote all

my time to my career and do things around it without rushing back to

change the nappies are going on holiday with all the kids are all

that. Hole-mac, how ghastly it sounds! -- oh. But the thrill of my

life and the possibility of a changing in the future is to see

kids in school, and then talking about teenagers, who say, do not

come here and talk about being gay. You are only talking about being gay

because, for years, people have pointed that UN said you're queer.

You give yourself a more sympathetic label. We do not want labels. We do

not know if we are gay or not. We might be straight one day, gave an

excellent and I think, that is the future. -- and gave the next.

Thank you for talking to us. So Ian McKellen. -- Sir Ian McKellen.

Good morning. We have some rain working its way in from the West.

Before we take a look at that, let's look at some of the highlights of

Monday. A beautiful Weather Watchers pictures sent in from Cambridge I. A