LONDON -- A funny thing has happened imperceptibly yet unmistakably to the British theater of late: an entire generation of stage actor has pretty well passed from view. By that, I don't mean the swathe of actor-knights (and, on the distaff side, dames) who were already making their theatrical farewells when I first moved to London a...
There was no single archvillain in ''The Prisoner,'' which was one of the many distinctions of that legendary late-60s spy series. Patrick McGoohan played No. 6, a British agent held captive in a Kafkaesque resort called the Village who struggled to escape an oppressor so bureaucratic and faceless that its leaders were interchangeable: each week, a...
Ian McKellen had already read the script of a new version of the late-1960s cult television series ''The Prisoner'' when he met the author, Bill Gallagher, last year at a London restaurant to discuss the project. As Mr. Gallagher recalls their first encounter, Mr. McKellen hugged him, then gently patted him on the head and asked, ''What goes on in...
Sir Ian Murray McKellen (født den 25. maj 1939 i Burnley, Lancashire, England) er en engelsk skuespiller, som er berømt for sine roller som Gandalf i Peter Jacksons filmatisering af J. R. R. Tolkiens trilogi om Ringenes Herre, Magneto i Bryan Singers trilogi om X-Men og sir Leigh Teabing i Ron Howards Da Vinci Mysteriet. Han er også meget berømt for sine eminente præstationer i teater, for hvilke han i 1979 blev optaget i Order of the British Empire og i 1991 blev ridder, hvorfor han bærer titlen "sir". Ian McKellen er erklæret homoseksuel og har deltaget i mange aktioner for at bakke op om homoseksuelles rettigheder.