{"id":146265,"date":"2015-07-10T08:23:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T08:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/07\/10\/bakerstreetbabes-bluesandbooks-mr-holmes\/"},"modified":"2018-09-07T06:06:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T06:06:24","slug":"bakerstreetbabes-bluesandbooks-mr-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/07\/10\/bakerstreetbabes-bluesandbooks-mr-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-146265 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/07\/10\/bakerstreetbabes-bluesandbooks-mr-holmes\/attachment\/146266\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/tumblr_nr1eo9jUSR1qjrvvto1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/tumblr_nr1eo9jUSR1qjrvvto1_1280-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/tumblr_nr1eo9jUSR1qjrvvto1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"100vw\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bakerstreetbabes.tumblr.com\/post\/123635375712\/bluesandbooks-mr-holmes-star-ian-mckellen\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">bakerstreetbabes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bluesandbooks.tumblr.com\/post\/123318551071\/mr-holmes-star-ian-mckellen-acts-his-age-ian\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">bluesandbooks<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><b><\/p>\n<p>Mr Holmes star Ian McKellen acts his age<\/b><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Ian McKellen is wearing complicated boots, skinny jeans, a tightish shirt and a bright herringbone jacket that, as fashion demands, is about three sizes too small for him. Being McKellen \u2014 aka Magneto (<i>X-Men<\/i>) and Gandalf (<i>The Lord of the Rings<\/i>) \u2014 he carries this off much better than your average 70-something would. Perhaps his secret is not pretending to be young.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes I wake up and look in the mirror \u2014 if I can see \u2014 and think, \u2018Ooof! I\u2019m 76 next week \u2014 76! That\u2019s old,\u2019 \u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I know it\u2019s old because a lot of my friends regularly die, and they\u2019re my age.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sitting in the globalised nothingness of London\u2019s Canary Wharf Four Seasons hotel (he lives \u2014 and owns a pub, the Grapes \u2014 nearby), we talk about age a lot. Inevitable, really: in his new movie, <i>Mr Holmes<\/i>, he plays Sherlock in both his 90s and his 60s. For him, of course, this is kids\u2019 stuff. Gandalf was a 7000-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>The older Holmes is, cognitively, going downhill and desperately trying to reassemble his memories. McKellen\u2019s mind, in contrast, seems to be fine, but he has been going through the same process. (His mother died when he was 12, his father when he was 24.) \u201cWith my cousin Margaret the other day, I was looking at some photographs \u2014 they\u2019re of my young parents \u2014 and thinking, she would never see me grow up, and neither of them knew she\u2019d got breast cancer, and they\u2019d no idea what the future was, and they looked so happy and beautiful. I have an emotional response to it. I\u2019ve got some letters from my father to my stepmother, and I don\u2019t think I will be able to read them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Remembrance may now be a professional necessity as he nervously edges towards a memoir. There have been talks with publishers, and he has his first line: \u201cI know exactly where and when I decided to try to be a professional actor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was outside the Arts Theatre in Cambridge,\u201d he explains. \u201cI could take you to the flagstone where I was standing. The publishers have actually persuaded me it\u2019s worth doing. I\u2019m not convinced. I don\u2019t have a lot to say. I think, just in a fantasy world, I would like to have written some wonderful poems, I would like to have written a novel. I\u2019ve never sat down with a blank sheet of paper and thought about it. But, you know, why should I? I\u2019m good at what I do and I can carry on doing it. I\u2019ve not run out of steam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he has often said, actors leave few tangible traces, even though they leave behind films and TV: \u201cA few films,\u201d he muses, \u201cthough they\u2019ll look terribly dated.\u201d Yet McKellen, for all his modesty, does have another legacy \u2014 that of campaigner, most famously for gay rights. This writer interviewed him in 1988, when he came out and attached himself to the cause. Then, he was slightly bemused by this new role.<\/p>\n<p>How did that happen? There is a long pause.<\/p>\n<p>This may be deep thought or it may be puzzlement about what he is expected to say. Finally: \u201cI\u2019ve always been a bit shy, and I\u2019ve always supposed that what appealed to me about acting was that I could stand up in public and draw attention to myself and not feel shy, because I was protected by the fact that I knew what the next line was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He became one of the founders of the Actors Company, a co-operative, and discovered he could handle meetings, even chairing some. He emerged as a public figure in 1979, when he took part in a march against value-added tax on theatre tickets. \u201cI spoke with my own voice right out of my head! Now, that was all before the gay stuff, but I was sort of preparing for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I remind him that at our encounter in 1988, I provoked him by quoting some remarks of the philosopher Roger Scruton about childless gays\u2019 lack of obligation to the future. \u201cDoesn\u2019t it seem so old-fashioned now?\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s gone, all that. The distant days of Section 28 [a Thatcher-era rule against \u2018promoting\u2019 homosexuality]. It\u2019s astonishing for a British Tory prime minister to insist on gay marriage, dragging the party behind him. I suppose it\u2019s possible because I live in a small country and you only have to persuade about 50 people, all of whom live within sight of this window, and if they agree, they can have it in law within a year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can bear witness now. I know what I\u2019m talking about. That isn\u2019t true of much else in my life. I know I\u2019m right. It\u2019s a wonderful feeling. It\u2019s what any religious person feels. I\u2019ve got God on my side, but I don\u2019t need God, I know I\u2019m right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These evangelical flames may well be fanned by a degree of guilt. He never came out to his parents, even though he was living with a man well before his father died. He later did to his stepmother. \u201cWhen I told them, one by one they said, \u2018We\u2019ve known for 30 years.\u2019 They were puzzled that I hadn\u2019t mentioned it before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not telling his father is where the guilt lies. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t fair of me. You\u2019re 24, you\u2019re living with another man, you know that about yourself, your father loves you, is always asking how you are in every possible way, and I think, \u2018If he\u2019d lived a bit longer, I would have told him.\u2019 We couldn\u2019t really have a proper relationship until I had. I didn\u2019t give him a chance to say \u2018That\u2019s all right\u2019, then get interested in my life from that point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the other great dynamic in his life, one he shares with Kenneth Branagh, Anthony Hopkins and many others, is the move from British stage maestro to US (and, in his case, New Zealand) blockbuster fodder. Ever since 2001, his Gandalf has been striding the antipodean ranges; and ever since 2000, he has been bending metal as Magneto.<\/p>\n<p>This has made him rich, but also famous in an entirely new way. For one thing, he travels on the London Tube and gets recognised. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing they know who I am. They don\u2019t bother me. I don\u2019t think they\u2019d tangle with Gandalf or Magneto. But when they do, they only want to say something nice, and that\u2019s not bad, you know. About once a day, someone comes up to me and thanks me. That\u2019s lovely, lovely. That\u2019s the sort of recognition I get, not wanting to touch me and scream or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps not telling the truth about his sexuality taught him the art of self-concealment, essential for any actor. Indeed, at Cambridge he deliberately ditched his Lancashire accent in favour of received posh pronunciation, another act of concealment. He had been mocked for his flat vowels. \u201cI didn\u2019t like being mocked. I also thought it would help with acting, so I changed it. I shouldn\u2019t have bothered. Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney and Alan Bates were older than me, and were doing the classics in northern accents. I\u2019m slipping back into my accent now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He defends becoming yet another Sherlock Holmes in Shakespearean terms. \u201cIf you do Romeo or Hamlet, you know stacks of actors have done it before, but that doesn\u2019t put you off. The idea of playing a part that a lot of other people have played is not alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Mr Holmes<\/i> is an odd thing, but it keeps you watching, which is, perhaps, all that matters. He says: \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be offered a big part in a small film after those small parts in big films.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Next, with Patrick Stewart, he is bringing their production of Harold Pinter\u2019s <i>No Man\u2019s Land<\/i>, a great success on Broadway, to London. He has also just returned with Derek Jacobi in the ITV sitcom <i>Vicious<\/i>. They play Freddie and Stuart, two gays who have been together for 50 years. And he will appear as a clock in a new Disney version of <i>Beauty and the Beast<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>There will be no more Gandalf: the franchise is on hold. Christopher Tolkien is resisting further use of his father\u2019s works. And there will be no more Magneto: \u201cMichael Fassbender is, I suspect, the future.\u201d But there will be much more McKellen in one form or another, even if that memoir never gets beyond the first line. (He asked me how to write a book, and I told him to start work at 6am. He looked shocked.)<\/p>\n<p>I leave him, dressed young, but acting his age as Magneto, Gandalf and now Sherlock, tangible traces of a great actor\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/world\/mr-holmes-star-ian-mckellen-acts-his-age\/story-fnb64oi6-1227425458908\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/world\/mr-holmes-star-ian-mckellen-acts-his-age\/story-fnb64oi6-1227425458908<\/a><\/p>\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\"><img src=\"https:\/\/78.media.tumblr.com\/3028f1c7af21dab302f3d4eadc72958b\/tumblr_inline_nr1ek0R5dY1qi2go1_540.jpg\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Go see this as soon as you can!!!!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>bakerstreetbabes: bluesandbooks: Mr Holmes star Ian McKellen acts his age Ian McKellen is wearing complicated boots, skinny jeans, a tightish shirt and a bright herringbone jacket that, as fashion demands, is about three sizes too small for him. Being McKellen \u2014 aka Magneto (X-Men) and Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings) \u2014 he carries this &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/07\/10\/bakerstreetbabes-bluesandbooks-mr-holmes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1045,13709,43,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146267,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146265\/revisions\/146267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}