Word: mckellen
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...McKellen, we'll have you know--and he will too--is not an old man, though you wouldn't guess that from his two new movies. He plays the frail, 67-year-old movie director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, and a Nazi near 80 in Apt Pupil. "People must think I'm in my 70s," he says with a sigh. "My danger is being typecast older than I am." But that, ladies and gentlemen, is Acting. Sir Ian is a lithe 59, two years junior to Redford, Nicholson, Hoffman. He doesn't care to be cast forever...
...hear one or two of you wondering, "Sir Ian who?" That's because you don't get around much--not, anyway, to London or Leeds or Los Angeles or other theater venues where McKellen has illuminated the stage for nearly four decades, torched it with his wily intelligence, seduced it with the precision of his plummy voice. He has dwelt inside Hamlet, Romeo, Coriolanus, Richard II and Richard III (in his version, a purring, reptilian gangster), caressed the mood of wistful doom in Chekhov, played Captain Hook and Inspector Hound and, in Bent, a gay man in a Nazi camp...
...McKellen has had tiny roles in flop movies (Last Action Hero, I'll Do Anything), and though he originated the role of Salieri onstage in Amadeus, he didn't get the part in Milos Forman's film; maybe Forman thought F. Murray Abraham was more photogenic. Or perhaps he detected an unease in McKellen's film presence. "I belong on a stage," the actor says. "I feel totally at home. But at a studio, surrounded by other experts who all have their contributions to make, I used to feel a terrible pressure as the person in front of the camera...
...PUPIL Directed by Brian Singer Written by Brandon Boyce Starring Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro...
...scene midway through Apt Pupil, Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen) tosses a stray cat into an oven. The cat, of course, escapes, to wild cheers from the audience. This scene, while not profound or even endurable, epitomizes Apt Pupil. As in almost any drama, the villain is far more interesting than the "hero," who is likely asleep while our villain is drinking Old Crow, listening to opera and amusing himself by throwing cats into ovens or something. Of course, as in any Hollywood film, the one inviolable taboo is that no matter how many humans are gruesomly murdered, an adorable...