2024-09-14 04:42:27
Sir Ian McKellen, known to the wider public as Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings film series, had to stop his theater career in June after falling from the stage. But he would not like to leave it at that. “It would be best to come back and finish the role properly,” says the English actor.
The incident occurred in London’s West End, where 85-year-old Ian McKellen was playing John Falstaff in a modern adaptation of Henry IV. by William Shakespeare called Player Kings. During one performance in June, he lost his balance in a hectic scene and fell off the stage. “Of course I’d rather be able to say that I played Falstaff well than to fall off the stage and not finish it,” he notes.
Not long ago, he studied Hamlet again in London. However, due to his old age and health, he does not want to plan too far into the future. “That would be a bit foolish at 85,” he admits. McKellen broke his wrist and pinched a vertebra in the fall. According to him, he did not have more serious consequences thanks to the suit, which was stuffed to make Falstaff look more fit.
Ian McKellen is now the star of the feature film The Critic, based on the novel Curtain Call by contemporary British author Anthony Quinn. Set in London in the 1930s, McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, an influential, egotistical theater critic who judges productions and performances based on his mood.
But then the death of the newspaper’s owner leads to a change of editor-in-chief, and the critic is in danger of losing his job. To keep her, he makes a Faustian deal with the troubled young actress Nina. She was portrayed by Gemma Arterton. “The story may be a little melodramatic, but the 1930s were melodramatic,” notes McKellen.
The actor came out in 1988 as a forty-year-old. In the film, he plays a man who does not hide his homosexuality, but is still afraid that someone will discredit him because of it.
Ian McKellen jako Jimmy Erskine. | Foto: Nick Wall
It is precisely because of this that the character, who is fictional, interested him. In the 1930s, maintaining such an attitude would have been “challenging even for someone who is famous and well-off,” admits McKellen. “It would look exactly like you see it in the movie. That’s what I like about it,” he adds.
“I found the character completely believable. He intentionally destroys the lives of others not because he is an inherently ruthless critic, but because he is a gay man living in a society that despises him,” adds the actor in an interview with the New York Times.
He recalls that in the 1930s, for example, it was unthinkable for a man to walk around London holding hands with another man. “If society doesn’t allow you to do such things, then you can’t be surprised if the person sometimes bares their teeth at someone,” he thinks.
In the 1960s, when he was playing on Broadway in New York, he himself sometimes wrote to theater critics if he found inaccuracies in their texts. “And in every case they admitted they made a mistake,” he declares.
“Otherwise, of course, it would be stupid to try to convince them that you’re right. They’re not writing for you, but for the audience and also for their audience. I read the reviews. I’m interested in what others think,” adds the actor.
Ian McKellen began his theater career in 1961, three decades later he was knighted by the British Queen. For decades, he had a reputation primarily as a top Shakespearean protagonist, when he acted in productions of plays such as King Lear, Macbeth or Richard III. However, the wider public knows him primarily as the wizard Gandalf from the film trilogies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, or as Magneto from the superhero series X-Men.
The film The Critic, which does not yet have a Czech distributor, premiered this week at a festival in Toronto, Canada. It was shot by director Anand Tucker.
Video: Trailer z filmu The Critic
The film The Critic does not yet have a Czech distributor. | Video: Lionsgate