MYSTERY MAN McKELLEN
Putting a fresh twist on Sherlock is elementary
All my regrets were tied up with being gay and living at a time when it was illegal
There’s a buzz about sir Ian McKellen, literally. The Oscar-nominated actor, famed for his wise wizard Gandalf in Lord of the rings and The hobbit, has a new role as sherlock holmes. The film, Mr. holmes, shows Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective as a 93 year old, living out his final days in a sussex farmhouse, where he tends an apiary.
“The first thing I said was: ‘I’m having nothing to do with the bees!’” laughs McKellen, rapping his knuckles on the table.
Of course that would rather spoil things – so McKellen was taken by the film’s bee consultant, steve Benbow, to the rooftop of London’s Fortnum and Mason, where Benbow manages four hives for the bees to produce honey for the luxury store.
“Those bees seem to feed exclusively off the flowers in Buckingham Palace,” grins McKellen, who swiftly got over his fear of being stung. “They’re not interested in you unless you get in their way.”
It’s a typical example of McKellen’s unique life, one that’s as colourful as he is. Today, he’s wearing a turquoise fedora, dogtooth-check jacket and tartan tie, perhaps a nod to the fact his father Dennis, a lay preacher and civil engineer, was of scottish descent.
his hair may be wild and white, he may move slowly as he enters the room, but there’s no mistaking a sprightliness that makes him seem far younger than his 75 years.
The last time we met, he was off to see Kate Bush perform live at the hammersmith Apollo (“It’s such an event,” he murmured). This time, we’re in Berlin, where Mr. holmes is being unveiled. It reunites him with his good friend Bill Condon, who directed him 17 years ago in Gods and Monsters, in which McKellen played James Whale, the gay film director behind 1930s monster movie Frankenstein.
It was a critical movie for McKellen – and not simply because it scored him a first Oscar nomination and led to a glittering holly- wood career. “It was an important film for the industry, because it was an adult story that treated a gay man with the same seriousness as it would any other,” he says. A decade earlier, McKellen had admitted he was gay on a BBC radio show. ever since, he’s been an active spokesperson for gay rights, co-founding LGBT group stonewall and visiting schools to talk about homophobia in the playground.
While he’s arguably done more than most for the cause, he has a sense of humour when it comes to sexuality. Take the question of whether he feels holmes and his companion Dr. Watson (unseen in Mr. holmes) were lovers. “Oooh, that’s a saucy one,” he chides. “Not in our version no. I mean it is an oddity, but I’ve looked into it a little bit, I think there’s no possibility that Conan Doyle, who invented them, ever imagined they were.”
Far more crucial, in McKellen’s eyes, is the way his sherlock is “preparing to die” as he looks back on his life (and his last unsolved case). McKellen related immediately. he says: “You do think about death every day. Not in a mournful way necessarily, but your friends die, your contemporaries, people younger than you. Not in accidents, they just die. so you can’t help but be aware that: ‘Oh, I’m alive, today.’ With no sense of pride, but some gratitude.”
still, it’s not just luck keeping McKellen here; his lust for work must have something to do with it. “It probably does,” he nods. The
proverbial busy bee, he’s just shot The Dresser, a TV movie remake of the Albert Finney movie, with Anthony Hopkins. There’s talk of a Noel Coward biopic and a London stage engagement with his old friend Patrick Stewart for Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, a play they performed on Broadway in 2013.
So how does he do it? “You have to exercise. You have to watch what you eat, you have to watch what you do, you have to watch how much sleep you get. Because otherwise, I know I’d crumple up and just sit.”
He could always relax in his pub, I suggest. Along with his former partner, theatre director Sean Mathias, he is joint leaseholder on The Grapes, a watering hole in London’s Limehouse. “I could,” he says, blue eyes glinting, “but I don’t drink very much.”
If you did take a trip to The Grapes, you’d see Gandalf’s staff behind the bar. “I got into the habit of keeping a prop from every job I’ve ever done,” he says. “I’ve something from David Copperfield – Ipswich Arts Theatre, 1962. Where it all is, I don’t know.” You sense that his house is a treasure trove; not just a tribute to Gandalf and Magneto, the villain he’s played in the X-Men movies, but a nod to his time on stage, which garnered him one Tony and six Olivier awards.
His early years were devoted to acting. Born in Burnley, he was raised in Bolton and Wigan, where his older sister Jean first took him to see Twelfth Night. He can still remember for his ninth birthday getting a fold-away miniature Victorian theatre, with cardboard scenery and characters of Cinderella and Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. At 18, he won a scholarship to Cambridge to read English; it was here he started acting, appearing in Henry IV and Cymbeline.
His mother died when he was 12 and his father 12 years later and McKellen admits one of his biggest regrets was not getting to tell his parents he was gay. “All my regrets were tied up with being gay and living at a time when it was illegal to be gay,” he says. Like his Sherlock, he can’t help but look back on life sometimes. “Personally, I wish I’d known when I was young that I was quite attractive. What advantage I would have taken of it, who knows?” Thankfully, there have been compensations, he says. “I’m a very happy actor.”
Mr. Holmes opens on June 19.
You have to exercise, watch what you eat, watch what you do, watch how much sleep you get . . .