Ian McKellan über seinen neuen Film

[Mortica]

Auf Ian McKellans Homepage bin ich auf einen Artikel vom 17.05.2004 gestoßen, in dem er über seinen neuen Film "Emile" und noch einiges anderes spricht.

Seven ages of Sir Ian

(Filed: 17/05/2004)

'Old is a state of mind,' says Sir Ian Mckellen, whose new film, 'Emile', is about ageing. He talks to Catherine Shoard about refusing to play a Canadian and rest homes for gay OAPs.

"I can imagine what it's like to kill someone," says Sir Ian McKellen, slicing up his haddock and smearing it with mash. "I can imagine what it's like to cast spells or have superpowers. But imagining what it's like to be Canadian? No. You'd need experience for something like that."

 

It's a strange stumbling block. McKellen has mastered most roles - in costume as Gandalf, Magneto, Richard III; off screen as the international movie star, the impassioned gay rights activist and "the leading British actor of his generation", as his official website puts it.

But he won't attempt anyone from north of Maine, and he won't really explain why.

Still, that's the reason he emailed Carl Bessai, the writer/ director of the Saskatchewan-set Emile, and turned his project down. Bessai wrote back: what if McKellen was allowed to fiddle with the script? Ah, well, that would be different. So McKellen's character morphed from a native Canadian prof into an ex-pat who's spent the last 40 years in Cambridge (from where McKellen graduated in 1961 with a 2:2 in English) and who just happens to have a slight Lancastrian accent (McKellen hails from Wigan).

McKellen enjoyed wielding the red pen. "Carl seemed to think he was making a film about an old man! I kept saying, 'I'm not old! Take all this stuff out! What's old? Old is a state of mind.' " He abandons his fish for a Malboro Light, which he lights with dash. "You can be old at 30. I'm not."

It's true, McKellen doesn't seem 64. The facelift rumours may be false - his face is a bedspread of crumples - but he's still clear-eyed and dapper (green jacket, pink tie, clogs) and chatters happily of cooking scrambled eggs for 40 friends the day before. He's something of a tease, forever flipping between mock-defensive and genuinely miffed. In fact, he's decidedly unreadable - odd, you might think, for an actor. But perhaps that's what makes him such a specially good one.

Emile, however, is about ageing, whatever he says. It's a sober atonement drama in which the newly retired Emile (McKellen) regrets a decision made 30 years earlier, not to adopt his orphaned niece, Nadia (Deborah Unger). Relations between the two stay chilly until the intervention of Nadia's young daughter, Maria (Theo Crane), who asks Emile a series of probing questions about knocking on.

I try out these same questions on McKellen. Is it hard getting old? "I'll let you know! My stepmum is 97, that's old. And it's hard. But the quality of your life depends not on how much money you've got but on your attitude. And she knows a great deal more about American politics than I do because she listens to the radio all the time."

So it doesn't scare him? "I'd hate to be incapacitated. But you can still be jolly if you're in a wheelchair. And if you keep your spirit young, people will still like being near you." A year ago, he had the idea of setting up a rest home for gay OAPs. "I don't really have the energy to do it myself, but it's amazing there isn't one. There are situations you can call resolutely heterosexual, and rest homes are one of them. The nurses flirt with the old men and assume they'll like it. But if the old man were gay he'd rather have a male nurse sit on his knee."

Sounds like a winner. "Whenever I've mentioned the idea to people they say they'd happily put down money now for a room. And they don't want to be out in the countryside. They want to see matinees."

I ask him Maria's second question: what hasn't he managed to do yet? "Gawd! I'd need a shrink to tell me that. Though I don't really want one - this idea that there's a perfectability we should all aspire to is dangerous. Professionally, though, I did once say I had three ambitions. One was to be on the front of the Radio Times [that got ticked off long ago]. Another was to be in Coronation Street."

He was offered the chance - the producers wrote him in as Annie Walker's long-lost nephew - but he got cold feet. The third was to be in panto, and that dream will come true this Christmas when McKellen dons the purple beehive as Widow Twanky in Kevin Spacey's Aladdin at the Old Vic.

It's an intriguing prospect. McKellen is fun in real life - it takes him forever to stop giggling after he mishears a question about paying with himself (Gandalf's face is on coins in New Zealand) - but he's not known as a comedian. And his thoughts on panto's place in theatrical history can seem dry. "Lately the form has been awfully debased. But we're going to pull it out of the drain, get back to the story. And Aladdin is born in Baghdad! Think of that!" Will it be set in modern-day Iraq? "Peking, probably. We're going to make it short, so the children don't fall asleep."

McKellen's keen on kids; he'd have to be, with Gandalf's following. He's a godfather, too. "A bad godfather. I haven't been too attentive." You suspect that's not true, and he agrees he'd probably not have done what Emile did.

"I hope I might have had the strength and humility to break out of old patterns. I know too many people who pass on with unresolved issues. When you die you've had it. I think that was Carl's message. It's never too late to take hold of your life."

That's what McKellen himself did in 1988 when he came out as homosexual during a live radio debate with Sir Peregrine Worsthorne. Far from hampering his career, the revelation rejuvenated it. Before long, he was knighted, lauded for his bravery and offered bigger and better parts on screen.

He made the most of this increased profile, co-founding Stonewall in 1989 and becoming a regular on rallies, where he spoke with such zeal Matthew Parris was prompted to wonder whether McKellen might not be just an actor who adopted politics as an afterthought, but a politician for whom acting was just a forethought.

It's certainly a point of pride that The Lord of the Rings' success means even more young people (and their parents) will have heard of a mainstream gay actor. In fact, his three most recent film roles (Emile, Gandalf and Magneto) have been ones in which sexuality doesn't figure, but he's quick to maintain that coming out never limited his choice of roles. "The first person I played afterwards was John Profumo, about whom very little is known apart from that he was a raging hetero."

Why is it, then, that so many actors, especially those known in the business to be gay, don't come out? McKellen shifts in his chair. "I think they're living in the past. It was the feeling till very recently that if you were honest about being gay in any profession then you'd lose your job. And homophobia is still rife. There are still certain parts of the world where I might be stoned to death just for being myself. Thank goodness we live in a country where an Englishman's home is his castle and what you do behind the turret walls is up to you. It's beginning to be a non-issue. But old habits die hard."

So he doesn't feel at all betrayed by any of his collegues that haven't followed suit? A long pause. "Yep, I do. But I also understand and I don't judge. I was 49 before I came out. And I've never met anyone who regretted doing so."

It's tricky for McKellen - ever the diplomat, yet on this issue fiercely passionate (he even rips Leviticus out of every Gideon bible in every hotel room he stays in). "For all its pain, being gay does force you to think about what your place in society is, and to judge society accordingly. Straight people don't have to do that - unless they're disabled or from an ethnic minority. And that's why the witness of gay people, just like that of other minorities, is so important. Not, of course, that my minority is a belief. People choose to be Christian. They even choose to be Jewish - well, of the Jewish faith. I wouldn't go so far as to say that my rights are more important than theirs, because free speech is critical, but . . ."

Has he ever hankered after a straight life, or children of his own? "Not for years. I used to be rather relieved that kids weren't a possibility. Being a parent means keeping a tight rein on your selfishness. Though I don't suppose many parents do. Why isn't parenting taught? Why is it assumed that just because you can procreate you can be a good parent?" A little huff. "Anyway, I'm too frail to be changing nappies."

So how old does he feel? "I got asked that in the film, didn't I? And I said 10. Well, maybe not that young. I feel like everything's to come, like I'm just over halfway. I'm aware of the end, but it's not in sight." He squints, and smiles. "Maybe I just need my glasses."

Quelle

Bearbeitet 21. Mai 2004 von Mortica