Mckellen Actor Quotes & Sayings

My ambition is to get better as an actor. — Ian McKellen

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don't interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. — Pema Chodron

I got better as an actor, and still I'm getting better. That's only been possible because there's always been work. — Ian McKellen

I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around. — Ian McKellen

The hallmark of our times is change and acceleration, but we have to provide the history. — Jim Leach

There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I've got better as an actor. I've learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it. — Ian McKellen

The distinctions between advertising and marketing are blurring, requiring new roles and new forms of consumer-centric marketing. — Saul Berman

'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime ... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics. — Ian McKellen

Her eyes are open and her mind is somewhere else. — Neal Shusterman

I'm only an actor. I'm not a writer. I'm not going to leave any legacy. All I've ever done is learn the lines and say them. — Ian McKellen

In my youth I loved climbing and scrambling up rocks and mountains: now I seldom intrude on the dweller of a second story, and my greatest enemy or friend may avoid me altogether on the third; so humbled is the aspiring spirit of my youth. — Edward John Trelawny

We all sit in front of our mics and our scripts lay on music stands. Then the silliness begins! — Tara Strong

You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues. — Ian McKellen

When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the roast beef of England. And Old England's roast beef. — Henry Fielding

Usually I try to suppress any emotions that savor of regret, because they are invariably aperitifs to a main course of depression, and for the long-lived, that's a recipe for suicide. But that doesn't mean they can't sneak up on me sometimes.
And, like, gang-tackle me. — Kevin Hearne

Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted. — Ian McKellen

There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between human and nonhuman animals. But what we are overlooking is the fact that nonhuman animals are conscious beings, that they can suffer. — Peter Singer

[There's] nothing special about an actor's imagination, except that he uses it a lot. — Ian McKellen

If it doesn't feel like your heart
is either drowning or is being set on fire
then it probably isn't worth it at all.

Love is all consuming.
It is the perfect murder,
the sweetest suicide.

Let it kill you.

It's worth it, I swear. — Danabelle Gutierrez

You would be surprised how many directors don't know what they want. They might not know what they want until they see it, they might know what they want but no idea how to get it out of the actor, then you've both got a problem. — Ian McKellen

The performance is created by the director. The actor is the material. And I think that has to be true. — Ian McKellen

Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison? — Ian McKellen

Look at a guy like Ian McKellen, who is eighty or whatever, and he's just loving his work, and you can see that in the work. That defines what type of actor you are. And what kind of people want to work with you. And whether you can do this job for a long, long time. — Jason Clarke

The girl signed deeply and ever so slowly made her way down to the opposite end of the case. Using the metal tongs she passed over the golden yellow ladoo and reached for the darker pieces that Mrs. Singh usually set aside. I started to protest, but suddenly noticed the coldness in her eyes staring into mine. — Tracey M. Hook

No actor wants to play to an empty house. — Ian McKellen

I believe God's keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, some way, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can't give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it's peace or joy or satisfaction. — Joel Osteen

Gandalf's a good guy, and it's a good part. He says the right things, he believes the right things. An actor can have fun with it. — Ian McKellen

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience. — Ian McKellen

I can't take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I'll have to leave those other battles to somebody else. — Ian McKellen

So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor? — Ian McKellen

I used to comfort myself when I became an actor that it was a useful job, entertaining people. And it was important to do it as well as you possibly can. — Ian McKellen

There are directors, and I think this is true of all directors, it would be true if I was a director - If the actor didn't want to do what I was suggesting, I would let him do it his way, and then I would say to him, "Just give me one where you do what the director wants", and that, of course, is the take that's used. — Ian McKellen

I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them. — Ian McKellen

What is it with these people? They are more obsessed with me finding a girlfriend than I am.
"He's concentrating on his studies," says Mum proudly.
"Ah," says Mr Coles. "I should've done that, but at his age I was out on the town, living it up. Best days of my life, they were."
"Oh yes, mine too," says Mum with a weird twinkle in her eye.
I wonder how easy it is to kill two people with a screwdriver and a bag of half-frozen peas. — J.A. Buckle

Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one. — Ian McKellen

I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart's in the right place, and I love country music. — Keith Urban