Ian McKellen is listening to his inner critic.
It’s beating him up for not finishing out his latest theater role after he fell off the stage during a June performance of “Player Kings” and spent three nights in the hospital.
“Emotionally, I feel guilty and ashamed, you know, quite irrational because it was an accident. And it could have happened to anybody,” he says.
The actor, 85, says it could have been a “great deal worse” if he hadn’t been wearing padding to portray the rotund Sir John Falstaff during the adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” plays at London’s Noel Coward Theatre. While his fractures and chipped vertebrae are healing well, though, McKellen can’t shake the negativity of leaving the production early.
“You suddenly abandon all your mates who are putting on the show and you feel something’s come to an end prematurely,” he says.
But, he says, rumors of his imminent demise were definitely premature.
“I got the impression that dozens of friends wanted to come and say hello that, actually, they wanted to say goodbye. They thought I was on the way out,” says McKellen, adding with a laugh: “So I very determinedly always open the front door and run up the stairs and show that I’m not going anywhere!”
Although he’s not onstage, McKellen can be spotted at the theater in “The Critic,” a thriller set in the West End of 1930s London that’s in cinemas Sept. 13. This time, he’s in the audience, as gay newspaper writer James Erskine, who can make or break a career with a wicked turn of phrase in an era when homosexuality is illegal. Written by Patrick Marber and based on Anthony Quinn’s novel “Curtain Call,” it co-stars a host of British talent like Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Romola Garai, Ben Barnes and Lesley Manville.
McKellen spoke recently about his love of the theater, relationship with critics, the future of Gandalf and going back to work. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Do you miss being on the stage?
McKELLEN: I miss the routine. When I first started out, it was a great joy to me that when everybody else was taking time off at the end of a busy day, the actors were gearing up, ready to start theirs — that there was something about being an actor that was separate from the rest of the population. But that was probably because I was hiding the fact that I was gay or not talking about the fact that I was gay. It felt good to be different.
Acting, particularly in the theater, is totally satisfying. And if I’m not doing it, like at the moment. I think, “Well, what is life all about?” 85 is a bit late to be asking that question, because I settled with the fact that life for me was acting a long, long time ago. And so the idea of retiring or not being able to work fills me with dread really.
Q: Have you been able to go and see other productions?
McKELLEN: I haven’t. I’ve been nervous about going out. But I think this next month or two I shall get back to what I enjoy doing: going to the theater and see everything that’s on in the West End that I hear people talking about.
Q: This film, “The Critic,” celebrates theater but you’re offstage for a change, in the audience.
McKELLEN: It’s the murky side of theater. A corrupt senior drama critic was prepared to give someone a series of good reviews if she will agree to help him out with the problem he’s got. I don’t think these days any critic has that sort of power but in the 1930s, before social media and when newspapers were everyone’s source of the truth, theater critics could be extremely powerful.
Q: What did you think of his ruthlessness?
McKELLEN: I think the source of it might be: How do you survive as a bon vivant and social person, who likes the limelight, when you’re having to be discreet, if not secret, about what you really are? That’s most likely to curdle the brain somewhat, isn’t it?
Q: What has your relationship been like with critics over the years?
McKELLEN: They began very well when I was at Cambridge University in a play. It was “Henry IV, Part 2,” which is part of the play that I’ve been doing when I played Falstaff. But this was 70 years ago, nearly. The Marlowe Society, that were putting this play on, didn’t put the names of the actors in the program — everyone was anonymous. And the critic from the now-defunct News Chronicle said he wishes that he’d known my name because it might well become a name to be remembered.
Now, when you read that in the national newspaper, and you’re 18 and you’re just an amateur actor, enjoying himself, it does pull you up short. That day I decided I’d become an actor. I wrote to him 20, 30 years later and said, look, I’ve always been meaning to thank you for this. Said he couldn’t, alas, remember the performance (laughs).
Q: Do you still read all your reviews?
McKELLEN: I do, but with a wary eye. I like to know what the word in the streets is and if you’ve had a lot of bad reviews, or good ones. But the whole business of acting in the theater is, at 7:30, curtain goes up. All the lights turn on and you get on with the job for that night’s audience. And what happened on the first night? Irrelevant. And it should be no secret that actors get better or can get better. And if you do 100 performances of something, you’re likely to be better on the 100th performance than you were on the first night.
Q: I wanted to check in on “The Lord of the Rings,” because you said that you are still Gandalf’s physical representative on Earth. So with the upcoming film “The Hunt for Gollum”…
McKELLEN: I’m told Gandalf is in it and I haven’t read a script and there are no plans yet just to filming dates. But if it all worked out, I’d be very happy. It means I could go back to New Zealand for a spell, particularly in the summer. That would be lovely. But there’s other work going on and I’m not going to get too upset if these are false hopes.
Q: So you’ll be back at work next year? Are you already lining stuff up?
McKELLEN: Yes, I’ve agreed to do a film in January and then I hope, another one a little later on. And then, be good, wouldn’t it? Go back and play Falstaff again and finish that job off? It’s partly why I’m a bit emotionally unsettled. It didn’t end properly. So if we went back and did it again, did a bit more touring, perhaps went to the States…
