In more than six decades of acting, what has changed the most? eamonmcc
My first job, in 1961, was at the Belgrade theatre in Coventry, the first British civic theatre built after the second world war, with public funds and a subsequent Arts Council grant. My weekly wage was £8, enough to pay for my flat, which cost three guineas, and to eat well enough. Every city of similar size had a repertory company, presenting a new production every two weeks, and crucially providing employment for tyro actors in need of a prolonged apprenticeship in the company of senior players. You learned what you could and couldn’t do and what you could aspire to. Today, alas, there is not a single rep company in the UK and no comparable system for training new talent.
My Belgrade flat, built to house a member of the disbanded company, now holds the council’s office of outreach and education. What is unchanged since 1961 is the enthusiasm of audiences for lively theatre, classic or newly written. Going to live theatre is still one of the principal amusements in the UK.
Do you still do your warm-up yoga before a show in your jockstrap, like you used to do in the stalls bar at the Lyric during Dance of Death? Theafterdarkclub
Not sure about the jockstrap, but I still like to join the other actors who warm up body and mind before a show. We stretch muscles, clear vocal cords and gossip, reminding ourselves that putting on plays is, at best, a communal business.
Can you do a TV show where you and Patrick Stewart travel around Europe in a camper van reviewing local stage productions and discussing them afterwards over dinner? ExileCuChulainn
I’d enjoy that, but I’m not sure about the camper van. Put five-star hotels in the contract and I’ll see what Pat thinks.
If you could go back in a time machine and meet Shakespeare, what would you ask him? Dr_J_A_Zoidberg
I’d say: “So did you – rite the plays and act in them? I’m sure you did, but a few quite sensible people don’t believe it. Also, could you please sketch a plan of the original Globe theatre, which I suspect didn’t have those two obtrusive columns that restrict sightlines from the stage of the so-called Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank. Oh and: have you seen Hamnet yet?”
What do you remember of your wonderful 2025 Glastonbury appearance performing with the Scissor Sisters – and the crowd chanting your name afterwards to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army? brucevayne1000
Unlike many of my friends, I never aspired to be a pop singer – but it’s heady stuff, parading in front of a band’s enthusiastic fans. The whole set felt like one long curtain call of love and thanks.
Who would win a fight between Gandalf and Dumbledore? relevantusername
Why on earth would they be fighting? But Gandy, of course, would win. The original wizard.
Spellbinding performance … McKellen as Gandalf. Photograph: Mark Pokorny/New Line Cinema/Allstar
Did watching your father – a lay preacher – captivate an audience inspire you to become an actor? Do you believe in a creator or are your beliefs more humanist? Charlesosborneprague and Machine2
No. It was actors – amateur and professional – who first enraptured me. My father’s father was a nonconformist preacher, with wide gestures from his narrow shoulders to emphasise his thin Lancashire tones. Once, in his 80s, he was addressing a full assembly in Houldsworth hall in Manchester, when he ran out of steam – like an actor forgetting his words – and silently slumped down behind the lectern. The confused embarrassment all round was allayed by his leaning forward out of his chair to say: “This is worrying you all a lot more than it does me.” I think he was as much at home in the pulpit as his grandson feels on stage.
And no. I fondly recall the gospel stories I heard over and over in my childhood from the pulpit and in Sunday school. But I stopped worshipping in my teens. Since then, Quakers are the religious society I most admire, for their adherence to the sixth commandment and for being the first Christians to support gay rights in the UK.
What has drawn you to pantomime? aphaelhoward
Pantomime uses every possible theatrical device to tell its moral tales – slapstick, sentiment, song, dance, verse, cross-dressing, community singing, extravagant costumes and scenery, audience participation. Anything and everything goes. It is a matchless introduction to all that is possible in a theatre and ideal for children and for a family outing. As a homegrown art form, it hasn’t travelled well. Americans find it as baffling as cricket. My patriotism is rooted in Shakespeare and panto.
He’s behind you … Sir Ian is a fan of panto. Photograph: Alastair Muir/REX/Shutterstock
Dominic Monaghan says he saw David Bowie in the casting office for Lord of the Rings. Did Peter Jackson ever mention he’d considered Bowie for the role of Gandalf? McScootikins
I’ve never managed to persuade Peter to confirm who turned down the wizard part of a lifetime. As for Bowie, he was not alone among radiant music stars who would have liked to have been equally successful in the movies but never quite were. For all Gandalf’s acquaintance with magic and the supernatural, I was most attracted to the old boy’s humanity – the sort of hirsute tramp of a geezer who you might hope to meet traipsing through Middle-Earth’s highways and byways. Perhaps Bowie’s striking looks and voice would have stressed the more supernatural side of his nature and appearance.
As a pub landlord, have you ever had to throw anyone out – and were they famous? ivlek47
Never, perhaps because Gandalf’s staff stands sternly behind the bar in the Grapes, deterring misbehaviour among Middle-Earth hobbits and Limehouse imbibers alike.
At the Grapes pub in 2012. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Guardian
What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given? TooMuchSpareTime
After a 1979 performance of Martin Sherman’s Bent – the drama that educated the world about the ill-treatment of gays in the Nazi labour camps of the Third Reich – one of Britain’s best-known and respected actors came backstage. Alec Guinness sat rather primly in my dressing room, enthusing about the play before inviting me out to supper. I stupidly declined, but a decade later was given a second chance to meet up with the great man.
He took me for an Italian lunch in Pimlico, where we chatted about this and that until he brought up the real reason for his invitation. He had heard about my work to establish Stonewall – a lobby group to present to the government and the world at large the case for treating UK lesbians and gays equally under the law with the rest of the population. He thought it somewhat unseemly for an actor to dabble in public or political affairs and advised me, sort of pleaded with me, to withdraw. Advice from an older generation, which I didn’t follow.
This all came back watching the current tour of Two Halves of Guinness, a solo show which hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him, I suppose – Zeb Soanes’ immaculate impersonation notwithstanding.
Sir Ian as Hamlet and Susan Fleetwood as Ophelia in the Prospect theatre company’s touring production in 1971. Photograph: Donald Cooper/Alamy
Of all the parts you’ve played, have you ever thought: “Why on earth am I doing this?” eternalsceptic
Just once, playing Dame Celia Johnson’s son in the BBC version of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever. I had loved her in his film Brief Encounter, wrote a fan letter, got a kind reply and hoped to befriend her during our rehearsals – my prime reason for taking the job. Alas, at coffee, lunch, or teatime breaks, she retreated into the silence of her Daily Telegraph crossword and left me wondering: “Why on earth am I playing one of the unfunniest parts in world drama?”
To be or not to be? If anyone knows, it’s you, Sir Ian. Kinavya
Playing Hamlet in my late 20s, I took “be” to mean “live life to the full”, which suited my youthful ambitions. When I returned to Hamlet a couple of years ago on stage and screen, I realised that he answers his timeless question in the final act of the play, before its bloody outcome, when he confides to his best friend: “Let be.” And so say I.
The Christophers is in UK and Ireland cinemas from 15 May and opens in Australia on 4 June