Ian McKellen, 86, explains why he's preparing himself to die
At age 86, renowned Hollywood actor Sir Ian McKellen has accepted he may not have long left, but he won't give up acting yet.
While many 86-year-olds may be in the depths of their retirement, McKellen hasn't slowed down - and in fact, has been busier than ever.
He joked in a new interview that he only became 'famous in [his] sixties' when he starred as Magneto in X-Men and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, saying people 'only really know [him] for two films'.
However, his bustling and flourishing career actually kicked off in 1961, beginning on stage with his love for theater, where he quickly became a kingpin of the RSC and National Theatre in the 70s.
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Ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theater to popular fantasy and science fiction, McKellen has starred in numerous blockbusters and theatre productions which saw him knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 for his work.
Born in Burnley, UK, in 1939, McKellen knows he is getting older, and recently told The Sunday Times: "But, yes, I have accepted that I’m not immortal.”
Back in June 2024, the actor fell off the stage at the Noël Coward Theatre in London while playing Falstaff in a performance of Player Kings, and suffered a fractured wrist and chipped vertebra.
Happy to be able to 'remember lines considering my age' it was a quick reminder to the actor that you can't pause live theatre, unlike filming.
McKellen joked that if something goes wrong with your body or mind on a movie project, you can 'just stop while filming and say, "Can I have a tea?"'
"Yet I still function. And really the inevitability of mortality comes not just from what you are feeling about yourself, but the simple fact that your friends die — all the time. When you are young, death is astonishing, a fascinating thing, but it’s a feature of getting older. Death becomes ever present," he further detailed.
Elsewhere in the interview, the actor shared his thoughts on Chloé Zhao's 2025 movie Hamnet, which has received eight Oscar nominations.
"I don’t quite get it. I’m not very interested in trying to work out where Shakespeare’s imagination came from, but it certainly didn’t just come from family life," he said.
It's been 25 years since McKellen was cast for Lord of the Rings, but he has no plans of hanging up his acting boots yet as Gandalf is back next year for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, as he said he 'cannot have anybody else play Gandalf'.
Calling the new film an 'adventure story', McKellen will be jetting off to New Zealand for filming in July, where he will then be 87, and despite reflecting on his career and preparing for his death, it looks like he will still be a prominent actor on the big screen for a while yet.
As Gandalf says: "Death is just another path, one that we all must take."
Topics: Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Celebrity, Film and TV
The UNILAD Team