Ian McKellen | Interview outtakes

Ian McKellen

Photo: Sarah Dunn; Photo illustration: Jamie DiVecchio Ramsay

Ian McKellen gave a hint, but just a hint, of what he’ll do after he finishes shooting The Hobbit trilogy next year, when he'll finally put Gandalf to rest. “I know what I’m gonna do,” he told me, “and I can’t really talk about it. Contracts aren’t signed. But I think I’m gonna do something on U.K. TV. I think I’m gonna be doing another movie. And I know I’m gonna be acting in the United States. That will be this time next year. I should be working in America, onstage.” McKellen says his website will be updated “the minute contracts are signed.” Until then, there’s the small matter of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, opening tomorrow, which we discussed in this week’s Time Out Interview. Another outtake from our conversation touched on his gay-rights activism:

You’ve said that, when you were younger, there was nowhere to be romantic as a gay person outside of people’s houses. What’s it like now for you when go into a gay bar or another gay setting?

Well, I’m very happy for everybody who’s there, as long as it’s not a ghetto situation. I hope people are having happy lives outside. Sometimes I go to gay clubs and think, Hmm, I wonder how many of these boys are out to their families or out at work or out at college or whatever, and whether this isn’t just a respite from their normal situation of being rather hidden. But I always get such a lovely welcome from gay people when they congregate together. It’s such a contrast that they can talk to other gay people openly. And I visit schools quite a lot and talk to kids. I always get a very positive response from quite young people and people in their early teens who can’t understand why anyone should be worried about this.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens December 14. Read our review here.