From Cambridge to London
"The Guardian"
1969
by Catherine Stott
When people in the theatre prophesy, as they will, who will
be the "great" actors of their generation, Ian McKellen's name is
always mentioned. This 29 year old actor from Bolton is in the virtually
unique position of never having been out of work since he left Cambridge and
has had notices better than possibly any other actor of his age. But 1969
should be the year when Ian McKellen will be thrust into the limelight, with
the release of the films of The
Millstone by Margaret Drabble, Alfred
the Great and The Promise.
Before he went up to Cambridge he was probably going to
teach but 21 plays, three years and "a degree of sorts" later he
became involved in the general belief that anyone who acted much at
Cambridge was going to do it professionally. The deciding factor for him was
a marvellous notice in the 'News Chronicle' which was the first time anyone
apart from his friends had ever said he was any good. Previously he had just
assumed he wasn't good enough if he had ever thought about it. He went from
Cambridge to the Belgrade, Coventry, and
never had to stage-manage as most young hopefuls do, which he puts down to
pure luck. Next came Ipswich. where at 23
he played Luther and Henry
V.
His rather charming modesty led him to accept the part of
the first citizen in Coriolanus in
the first season at the new Nottingham
Playhouse Actually he had misheard over the telephone and the part was
really that of Aufidius opposite John Neville's Coriolanus. The mistake was
discovered at the first meeting with the director Tyrone Guthrie.
Maggie Smith was so impressed with McKellen's West End debut
that she encouraged Sir Laurence Olivier to go and see him in A
Scent of Flowers, which he did on the one night McKellen was down
with flu. His reputation, however, was already rising so high that this did
not matter and he began an eight months' stint at the National immediately
afterwards, as Claudio in Zeffirelli's Much
Ado About Nothing. They wanted him to stay for three years but he
refused on the grounds that "people's fortunes vary enormously at the
National. It is a chancy business in that it might be very quick but it
might also take forever. It wasn't as though I was dying to be part of a
company since I'd already been in three. I wanted to see what would happen
if I went freelance."
He says he is "tremendously pleased at the way it is
going. "I've always been working and with something in view at the end
of it too. But I am always going after films and not getting them which is
upsetting at the time. I'm hoping that the films I have done will put me
more in the public eye and be useful as such, because whenever I've got to
play good parts in films they've not known who I was, which perhaps in the
future will not be the case. Not that I wanted to be a film star but it
should be useful to me in the theatre."
McKellen, in common with other actors of great promise, has
found that a vicious circle exists in the theatre; to get an excellent part
in an excellent play he must first be established to a wider medium than the
theatre to ensure the necessary box-office to satisfy the backers. Ruefully
he says: "This is the nature of the theatre. I suppose there must be
people who know who I am — and occasionally I meet them — but it is always
a surprise. It is a little annoying when people in the theatre and films who
should know you, don't."
He cites Alec McCowen as the prime example of an actor who
had had superb reviews and the acclaim of other actors, but was into his
forties before he truly emerged from that no-man's land as Hadrian VII. He
is not prepared to wait that long himself. When he played Richard
II recently at Cambridge and Guildford for Prospect Productions, his
performance was greeted as something of a theatrical event. Critics and
audiences were stunned by its power and depth and infinitely moved by the
experience.
He found it the most satisfying thing he has done. And
although he does want to play the great classical roles he has just refused
to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, because it would mean staying for
three years, and he would want to know at the start what he would be playing
at the end of that term. "I badly want to play Hamlet soon and
obviously the place to play it is at Stratford and if Trevor Nunn was to
direct me then I can't think of anything I would rather do. But I'm not
going to Stratford to do that in three years' time — that wasn't the offer
anyway."
Instead his plan is: "Ideally to make a success in
films without ever leaving the theatre. Not one actor in England has managed
it for a long time. Finney could if he wanted to, O'Toole hasn't, and
neither has Burton. The prospect of being a film star only attracts me in
that you get your own way more and more and that is the freedom I am after.
The taste I got in Richard II of helping for the first time to plan the
production with the director was marvellous and something I would not have
dared to do two years ago."
On the subject of great acting Ian McKellen feels that there
is a great division in performers between the personality people who have
charm and sell themselves and the people who really know their job
backwards-"and that's the sort of acting I really admire. When the two
things are brought together like in Judi Dench's work, then that is great
acting." If people think he is, as they do, a potentially great actor
then he regards this somewhat sceptically as "very nice." But he
says of himself: "I know I am getting more and more accomplished as an
actor, more capable of letting my voice and my body do what I want. This is
what I have done increasingly since Cambridge, where I was a very technical
actor indeed and always tended to portray the character rather than feel it
and bring it through myself. Now I can do this along with the
technique." Which was his modest response to being asked whether or not
he felt his description of great acting was within his grasp. He ends up
simply on the subject of himself with a shy smile and "I find it very
satisfying to act good parts well. That's all there is to it really."
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