From Richard III to Gandalf to Magneto and beyond, it’s difficult to think of another actor whose transformed iconic character from as many disparate genres to the big screen more successfully than Sir Ian McKellen. Now he’s tackling yet another mega-popular work, playing The Da Vinci Code’s Sir Leigh Teabing, and he’s decoded his experience for Hollywoood.com.
Hollywood.com: Prior to becoming involved with The Da Vinci Code, were you one of the legions who had read the bestselling novel?
Ian McKellen: No. I hadn’t. I have now.
HW: How closely does your portrayal of Leigh Teabing mirror what was written in the book?
IM: Well, the book is a bit short on character. The plot is what keeps you turning the page. In some novels you get to know more about the characters, but [in The Da Vinci Code] you get more about what they’re interested in as well: the Code, everything to do with Leonardo and Jesus and Mary. And actually, the description of Leigh Teabing makes me inappropriate casting. He’s small and round and white haired and, I think, balding and a jolly man. I’m rather gaunt and narrow. But Ron Howard didn’t care, and I don’t think that Dan Brown did, because the only description of my character is when you first meet him and thereafter his size is forgotten because he is on crutches–or sticks in our case, not crutches. So that was of interest, but I thought that he was a really interesting man and there was a lot for me to delve into about it. How did he get his polio, for example? What was his relationship with his life? We filled in a whole back story, and if you’re looking you can see it because the house is full of little clues as to what his past was like, but it’s nothing to do with the plot, really.
HW: How would you describe the version of the character we see in the film?
IM: He just seems to be someone who is hugely enthusiastic about the business of Jesus and Mary. He is indeed, but his interest is so intense that it perhaps encourages him to do things that he probably shouldn’t do. I wouldn’t want to go any further than that.
HW: This isn’t exactly the first time you’ve been involved with a book-to-screen translation where a rabid fan following would be critiquing every decision that’s made.
IM: Yes–Lord of the Rings. Fifty times, a hundred times bigger than The Da Vinci Code. Millions around the world over all the generations, and they were much, much more–and a book for them that was central to their lives. It wasn’t just an exciting read. It was a book that they read twenty times in some cases. They were very, very interested in the movie. Very disturbed about whether it was going to be the movie of their book or was it going to be Peter Jackson‘s book. I think that with The Da Vinci Code, I doubt if people have it more than once. It’s not that sort of book. You understand it as you go along and having understood it. It’s like a crossword. Once you’ve done the crossword you don’t rub it out and do it all over again and go onto another one, do you? I don’t. Of course though there is an immense interest, but it’s not the same sort of interest as you got with Tolkien where it was almost like filming the Bible for some people.
HW: The book sold millions of copies and the Catholic Church never said a word. Now, as soon as a film is coming out, there’s all of this uproar.
IM: Yes. I noticed that. Probably a bit of snobbery in there somewhere. The people who go and see movies, their minds aren’t as finely tuned as those who read a book. Is that what the Vatican is thinking? Therefore they have to be protected from what they see? I don’t approve of censorship. I don’t approve of having lists of things that you can’t see. The good thing about it is that once you publish a list of things that you can’t look at or can’t read it makes everyone want to do everything that you don’t want them to do. I think that the facts in the movie may well be challengeable, but maybe the truths are not. Maybe Dan Brown’s onto something about the nature of the institution, which has been around and as powerful as long as the Catholic church has. Maybe it isn’t quite the organization that it happens to look like from the outside. Maybe there are secrets, and that would be a truth about an organization like the Catholic Church that is probably incontrovertible, but the facts, the details of his criticism, I’m happy to believe, have all been made up.
HW: Do you think the average reader took it as the work of fiction it is, or read more into it?
IM: Well, while you’re reading it–or while I was reading it–I was nodding away going, “Yeah, that’s right. I bet that’s right. I bet that’s right. I’d go with that.” [Laughs] I can understand why people are exorcised by the affect that the book might have, but I think that most people that have read the book praise it for being a rattling good yarn. That’s what the movie will be, too. I do know Catholics who you would think might take offense at some of the suggestions about whether they’ve been economical with the facts over the years who say, “Look, we should welcome this attention. Let’s welcome the debate.” And are all for the movie being as popular as the book because religion is relevant to our lives, I would think. So it’s good PR, really. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Isn’t that the phrase?
HW: Tell us about your experience working with director Ron Howard.
IM: Well, you know him better than I do. You’ve been watching him for years, and he’s like that. He’s absolutely like that. He’s enthusiastic as a kid about it all. He’s nervous. He can’t quite believe, I think, his luck, that he’s allowed to play with the grownups. I get that feeling from him quite strongly. And he is super efficient, so when he tells you, when he first talks to you and says, “I want you to film on this day and you will end on that day.” That’s the way that it works out, which is brilliant. And having been an actor himself, of course he’s very sympathetic to the problems of acting and can often see things, I think, that another director wouldn’t. He and Tom [Hanks] got on extremely well and that was important. You felt that they were sort of twin leaders of the enterprise and then Akiva Goldsman–very unusual being there the whole time. He’s the screenplay writer. He and Ron, you felt, at times were directing it together. I mean, they were puzzling over problems together. Everything was shared. It was all very open, and I hadn’t expected that. We rehearsed for about two weeks in Paris, which is a bit unnerving when you suddenly find that you’re working with Tom Hanks. You sit around a table with him for four or five days and hear what he has to say and had him listen to what you’ve got to say you then relax. Ron was very good in that way, of just getting everyone together. It’s a good party-giver. He has his own sort of party.
HW: And next year you’re planning to return to the stage, and to one of Shakespeare’s most hallowed works.
IM: King Lear, yes. There is the wonderful actor Ralph Richardson, who is no longer with us and who played many parts in his life onstage and in film, he said to a friend of mine, “You know, one day you’re walking along and the sun is in the sky and there isn’t a cloud to be seen and the birds are tweeting and you’re feeling well. There is nothing wrong and then, oh, you find you’ve got your foot caught in a ‘Lear.’” And that’s what I’ve done.: I got my foot caught in a Lear and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I think that I’m going to have to jolly well play him. So I’m taking the year off now to get ready for the part. It’s a big part. It’s like climbing Everest, and so I’ve got to get into training and learn the lines and find out what it’s all about. I’ve been in it twice, but not playing the king.
HW: Where will you be performing this?
IM: That will be in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the UK, where they’re doing the whole of Shakespeare’s plays this year. All 37 plays will be done. Some will be visiting companies, and some will be done by the company itself, and ours is the last to be done. Then we will tour. We will come to the states and Australia and India, I hope, and then you can all come to my funeral [Laughs].
