Ian Mckellen Quotes

I don’t think I would ever have been able to be an actress had I not started at nine years old. I would have been the last person to stand up and say, ‘I’d like to star in the play.’

Richard [Griffiths] was by my side during two of the most important moments of my career. In August 2000, before official production had even begun on Potter, we filmed a shot outside the Dursleys', which was my first ever shot as Harry. I was nervous and he made me feel at ease. Seven years later, we embarked on 'Equus' together. It was my first time doing a play but, terrified as I was, his encouragement, tutelage and humor made it a joy. In fact, any room he walked into was made twice as funny and twice as clever just by his presence.

When somebody mentions that I did a play with George C. Scott, I'm like, it can't have happened. What was I doing on a Broadway stage at 11 years old? It's so far in the distance now.

The beauty of Broadway is that if I'm 60 or 70 years old, if they'll accept me back, I can go back. So I think for right now I'm going to focus on the music--it's the new baby--and see how it's going to work out, and then maybe in a few years maybe I'll go back.

Not long ago a friend asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from spending my whole life as an actor. There have been so many that I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, 'Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd'.

Every time I see Anthony Hopkins I think that, to some extent, he has just been getting away with it all these years.

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

When you're about 20 years old, you kind of think out - I figured out that it was better - less good to be successful and better to have a laughing life, laugh more than you frown all through your life. Because on the day you die, which one would you have said had the happier life, the better life? And so I put a lot of humor in my life.

When somebody you've known for 20 years, and with whom you have a full context, winks at you or whatever, it can be huge. I think in a sense what you're trying to re-create in fiction is that.

I think I always knew I was going to somehow be on a stage. I was quite an extrovert, as a child. And I did a lot of music, when I was younger, so I thought I was going to go into music, but I fell into acting, in a really weird way.

I did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.

I knew I wanted to be a performer really early on, like around 8 years old. I did tons of acting and loved being in front of people.

I think there's still a little bit of that 9 year-old in me and I'm pretty happy.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

When I started out, maybe because I did Thelma & Louise early on - but people were always asking, "Are things better for women now?" I would say, "Yeah, I think so. It seems like it." Then a few years in, I started saying, "I think so. I'm getting a lot of good parts, but I don't know." Then eventually, I was like, "Google it. I don't know, but it doesn't seem great."

I'm an actor and I am looking for roles where I can continue to evolve, and things that are challenging. I gravitate to the roles, not necessarily television or film. It's just the fact that, for me, the most interesting roles have been in television.

I stopped acting when I was about nineteen, twenty, when I got thrown out of college. I did act for about ten years. I don't know. I suspect I'm still a reasonably good actor, but I don't really know that I want to get on the stage again ... and having to say all those boring words by me over and over again ... I don't know if I want to do that. Also, I like a certain amount of freedom of movement, and if you're acting, you're stuck in one place for a long time. Having said that, I will probably be onstage next fall.

I think, as a comedian, the funniest you can be is with people you know, and [whom] you've known for years, in a pub. That's as funny as you get, and so the aim [while stand-up] is to get that funny on stage with 5,000 strangers, to get that funny in a room where people shouldn't be listening but they are.

I think Bob [Dylan] told me that he turned down twenty interviews that year, and I was the only one that he sat down and did an interview with. And, he said that it was one of his highlights, and it was one of my highlights. And, I was very glad to talk with Bob. I found out that he was a good fan of mine, and that tickled me.

You hope that the same people are coming back. I love playing with Angela [Bassett]. She's fierce. I met her years and years ago when she was a student at Yale, so to see her do these fierce roles and go on to [be] this powerhouse has just been awesome.

See your later years as becoming your treasure years. Sit quietly and think of all the times you were joyful, and let your body feel this joy.

I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego.

I think theater has given me the opportunity to show what a character actor I can be.

If I could make the same amount of money doing standup it would be no contest. The problem is that if you do make that kind of money doing standup, it's not in clubs, it's in big auditoriums and large venues, and I really think something is lost when you do standup for a big crowd.

I've been on stage since I was five years old and I feel really at home there.