Ian Mckellen

“If you've been in a film that's seen by millions and millions and millions of people, you're more likely to be recognized for that than for your theater performances, which were seen by considerably less people. Why would I get upset by that?”

“'The Da Vinci Code' is the most popular book of our times.”

“Doing some of the 'Lord Of The Rings' press junkets got a bit claustrophobic.”

“Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.”

“The spirit of the four hobbits in 'Lord of the Rings,' I suppose I miss that.”

“I'm the sort of person who doesn't write in ink. I only write in pencil, so it can be rubbed out.”

“I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.”

“No actor wants to play to an empty house.”

“Capitalism offers you freedom, but far from giving people freedom, it enslaves them.”

“One thing Middle-earth is short on is the feminine.”

“Bolton School has a great tradition in the liberal arts.”

“I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.”

“It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.”

“Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.”

“Establishing the rights for gay people to be married would cost the Australian government nothing financially and would gain for you worldwide respect from people like us and, of course, would change lives enormously - the lives of gay people and of their friends and of their families and therefore of Australia as a whole.”

“There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company.”

“I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.”

“There are some fantastic parts for older actors.”

“Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.”

“Gandalf saves the world and saves the soul of the world, really.”