Ian Mckellen

“There are still times in my life where I pull back from being totally honest, and I can't imagine a single straight person who would understand that.”

“You see people in Hollywood trying to make blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's not possible. There's some god up there saying, 'You will fail now.' But I suppose that's true of us all.”

“I always walk up the escalator on the Tube, and I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and that's good exercise, but you need more than that.”

“The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.”

“If you've got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed - I've just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.”

“There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay.”

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

“'The Lego Movie?' I've never heard of it.”

“I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying, 'This is fiction.'”

“You put anyone in the outfit, and they look like Gandalf. Not that clever.”

“There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage.”

“I'm not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.”

“What's nice for me, having identified myself for years as being rather shy, is now, wherever I am, in public, there tends to be a friendly face who's pleased to see me, and I like that.”

“The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.”

“Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.”

“Gandalf the Grey was always the guy I prefer. Gandalf the White was driven to do a particular job, whereas Gandalf the Grey is a bit more humane.”

“If I say often enough that I'm going to be in 'King Kong,' I'm hoping that Peter Jackson will take the hint.”

“Bill Gallagher's new version of 'The Prisoner' is an enthralling commentary on modern culture. It is witty, intelligent and disturbing. I am very excited to be involved.”

“I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.”

“In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.”