He doesn't really know how to spend money, he says, and people who do are
always saying, "Ian, you have to be more generous with yourself as well
as to other people." Do you think you're a bit mean, then? "Well,
judging by how other people live their lives, yes, I think I must be."
How interesting, I say (thinking, "That's not very appealing.") "Heh
heh heh," decoding "interesting" instantly. "I would say
that I'm more mean to myself than to other people. I would happily pay for
someone else to take a taxi in the rain but I would walk down to the Tube."
Really, he says he despairs of people who like to spend money because, "I
love a bargain and I adore my free travel and free prescriptions, now that I
am an old age pensioner and old, definitely old. Adore it. And I'm not the
only one. It's such aŠ" words almost cannot express the joy. "Oh,
you cannot believe your luck that it's all free!"
For a long time, he used to say that hardly any of his real friends were
well-off. Has that changed? "Well, I'm not in George Michael's league
or Sting's or Elton's and I call all of them my friends or acquaintances,
and I've seen the way they live and I'm as gobsmacked as anyone else. I've
lived in the same house [on the Thames, in historic and now very fashionable
Limehouse; Gordon Ramsay has recently opened a pub-restaurant there] that I
bought for £95,000 26 years ago and I've no intention of moving because I
can't imagine anywhere more appropriate for me to be. It's perfectly
possible for me to buy another house if I wanted one, but what would I want
another house for?"
It bothers him in a way that he has absolutely no interest in money, "but
then anyone can say that who doesn't have a crippling mortgage or any
responsibilities, and I've never had a family so of course you retain an
awful lot of money for yourself". The one extravagance he allows
himself is to travel first class "but on this tour I don't think we'll
be able to.We'll all be in coach and coach to Melbourne is no fun, is it?
And then doing Lear when you get there... so I'm rather dreading that."
McKellen's upbringing has clearly left a residing imprint on him. He grew up
in Wigan where his father was a civil engineer and both parents were
committed Nonconformist Congregationalists. His grandfathers were preachers
and other family members were missionaries. When I spoke to him all those
years ago, he told me that the family credo was that life is not just for
enjoyment's sake and that it was important to help people and challenge
received opinions. His mother died when McKellen was 12, but he was very
close to his Quaker stepmother Gladys, who loved the theatre and saw every
one of her stepson's plays until she was no longer able to travel.
"My success, at least in our relationship, was scarcely referred to
really," he says, when I asked whether she was thrilled by his
achievements.
"She didn't much like it if people she didn't know frightfully well would
come calling because they heard that I was around and wanted an autograph,"
he says. "She didn't approve of all that. Quakers aren't puritanical
but they are very level-headed about what's important, and what was
important was that I was acting well not that I was famous. Do you see
what I mean?"
I do, and that's why it is slightly puzzling that someone who seems as, well,
level-headed as McKellen himself hankers after Hollywood acclaim and that
elusive Oscar; particularly since he despises so much of what the industry
stands for. It is also strange, and a little bit sad, that all those years
of bravura acting his electric performances on stage, from any number of
Shakespearean roles to his mesmerising Bent is clearly eclipsed for
him by the high of his recent blockbuster breakthroughs. And isn't it ironic
that while all the bigtime movie stars from Kathleen Turner to Nicole
Kidman to Jessica Lange to Christian BaleŠ well, it's a long list are
desperate to strut their stuff on our London boards, McKellen only really
believes he's made it when he's a big-screen success over there?
But perhaps this is all part of the actor's special brand of non-conformism. "Nonconformists,
as opposed to Puritans and it's an important distinction have certain
attitudes about how you live your life," he says. "You relate to
other people in a neighbourly and Christian way and you work hard,
too.That's an important ethic. But you also don't fit in necessarily; you
are critical, you don't conform. So that is probably one of the words you
would have to use to describe me. So even if I've had a very obvious career
in the British theatre and have not been rebellious, I don't think I have
conformed. I have surprised people by doing panto, for instance, or Coronation
Street which doesn't seem at all surprising to me but it does to other
people."
Of course, he's right when he says that you can be in two minds about things,
and what could be more human than hankering after those rewards that come
less easily. "It's very rare to meet someone who says, ŒI'm in the
perfect job and couldn't be happier'," he says. "There are always
things you don't like about your work and I've had some wonderful times in
Hollywood and made Gods and Monsters there [for which he got the first of
his two Oscar nominations; the second was for Gandalf] and Apt Pupil and The
Shadow. But as for the local industry and its attitudes... well, I wouldn't
like it to be my only source of intellectual nourishment.
"They do behave very oddly indeed there, and when you get caught up in
that you can do it with a vigour and even an enjoyment... you know, playing
the game, doing what you're told in order to win the Oscar. But when you
don't, you do feel pretty stupid thinking, 'I've wasted all my time and
effort wanting something that, frankly, doesn't matter whether I have or I
don't.' You go through with it because that's what people out there do."
He's quite funny, in an acidic way, about Jim Broadbent's response when he won
his Oscar. "The point was that he had done nothing for it just came
out and picked it up! Afterwards he said, 'I am so sorry you didn't win,"
and I said, 'Oh yes, I'm sure,' and he said, 'As I was going up the steps, I
said to myself, "This should have gone to Ian because he really wanted
it"', and I thought, 'Well, that's the sort of speech that someone who
has just won an Oscar can make.'"
The angry McKellen of old was known to rail against the closeted Hollywood
stars, complaining that it was "disgusting" and "distasteful"
but now he reserves his judgmentalism for the industry itself. He finds it
baffling and beyond hypocritical that West Hollywood is so gay-friendly
one of the first places in the world where openly "out" policemen
patrolled the streets "and, yet, cheek by jowl with all that
liberal attitude, you have a local industry which is saying to local people
who live in the area 'When you come to work, you are not gay.' And I think
to myself, 'Can people whose minds work like that make good films? And if at
the heart of Hollywood there is that lie, how many other lies are there?'
