Ian McKellen

McKellen was in a relationship with Brian Taylor from 1964 to 1972. He later had a ten-year relationship with actor Sean Mathias that ended in 1988, and the two worked together on Bent and in stage productions.

McKellen has no children. He publicly came out as a gay man on BBC Radio in 1988 while discussing the British government's proposed Section 28 legislation.

McKellen developed an interest in acting during childhood, encouraged by his parents and sister Jean, who took him to theatrical productions including Shakespeare plays. At Bolton School, he appeared in school productions and played Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He later studied at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he joined the Marlowe Society and appeared in Henry IV and Doctor Faustus.

After graduating in 1961, McKellen made his professional debut in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. He gained early critical and popular recognition for playing Shakespeare’s Richard II and Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.

In 1971, McKellen co-founded the Actors’ Company, a collective in which actors had an equal say in selecting and casting plays and recruiting directors. He left the group in 1974 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company at the invitation of John Barton.

McKellen became a leading actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Great Britain and in London’s West End. His Shakespearean roles included Richard II, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Iago, Richard III and King Lear. He also performed in works by Anton Chekhov, Frank Wedekind and other modern playwrights.

His acclaimed stage performances included Bent, Wild Honey and Richard III, for which he received Laurence Olivier Awards. In 1981, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for playing Antonio Salieri in the Broadway production of Amadeus.

McKellen directed several plays and wrote and performed the one-man show Acting Shakespeare, which he toured for more than a decade. He also toured Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land with Patrick Stewart.

McKellen’s film work became more widely recognized in the 1990s. He played a South African tycoon in Six Degrees of Separation, appeared in the television film And the Band Played On, and starred in Apt Pupil. In 1995, he played Richard III in a film adaptation set in a fictionalized 1930s England and co-wrote its screenplay.

He portrayed film director James Whale in Gods and Monsters (1998), earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He later played Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Fellowship of the Ring and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the series.

McKellen reprised Gandalf in The Hobbit trilogy. Other prominent film roles include Magneto in the X-Men films, Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes, Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast, and roles in All Is True, The Good Liar and Cats.

On television, McKellen appeared in productions ranging from Rasputin and Coronation Street to Extras. He starred with Derek Jacobi in the British sitcom Vicious, playing one half of a bickering but loving gay couple.

McKellen is a prominent gay rights activist and co-founded Stonewall UK, an organization that lobbies for legal and social equality for gay people. In 2015, he and Derek Jacobi served as grand marshals of New York City’s Gay Pride Parade.

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and knighted in 1991 for his services to theatre. In 2007, he was named to the Order of the Companions of Honour for his services to drama and equality.

McKellen launched one of the earliest official websites for an actor, McKellen.com, on September 1, 1997. In 1999, he began publishing journal entries that developed into one of the earliest non-technical blogs.

In 2019, McKellen became the first actor to top The Stage 100 list of the most influential people in British theatre, following the UK tour and West End run of Ian McKellen on Stage.