Sir Ian McKellen proved just how powerful and attractive villainy can be when he sat down with Hollywood.com to discuss reprising his role as the provocative mutant Magento for X-Men: The Last Stand.
Hollywood.com: In the comics and in the films, the X-Men and their mutant nature have long been a metaphor for any alienated, disenfranchised or persecuted minority. What kind of feedback have you heard from the gay community about these films?
Ian McKellen: Well, less than I would have hoped, actually. Certainly, Marvel [Comics] says that the demographic for the comics is young blacks, young Jews and young gays. They respond most to the idea of mutants. They, more than most teenagers, are taught to believe that they are “mutants.” So when you get a story like this one in which a cure is found, a cure for being black, a cure for being gay, a cure for being a mutant, it comes right home. But actually in the circles that I move in the gays have never heard of X-Men. I don’t know. I think that it’s more an American phenomenon than British, and maybe younger than the crowd that I mix with. I do know that it does appeal very much to, if not just being an adventure story, to a lot of people who see it.
HW: What stood out, for you, about this third installment, that made you want to put on Magneto’s helmet again?
IM: I think that the plot is more interesting than the previous two. So it’s fair to say that it’ll be at least as exciting. Magneto gets to do an awful lot in this film, which he didn’t in the second one. So I’m very happy about it. It’s not going to be a change of direction. It’s not like Tim Burton is suddenly coming in and doing his stuff. Brett Ratner is doing basically what Bryan [Singer] did.
HW: Brett’s known for his tremendous enthusiasm as a director. How did that manifest itself on the set?
IM: I’ve often said that the way of defining a good director… You can’t be a good director unless you can hold a good party, because at a good party you have a group of people that you’ve specifically brought together because you think that they’ll get on. And then your job is to make them get on. Your job is not to have a good time. It’s to make sure that they have a good time. You treat each of them differently and make sure that they have the right drink in their hand. You say the right words of encouragement, you introduce people–you’re the facilitator. And that’s what Brett’s brilliant at. Absolutely brilliant. Bryan isn’t very good at that. I’ve never been to a party at Bryan’s. I dread to think what it would be like. Bryan is much more internal and self-obsessed and neurotic, and that comes out in the films that he makes, doesn’t it? It’s part of what he does. Brett is a party animal, and he wants everyone to have a good time. If they’re enjoying themselves then so is he. Well, that’s a very, very good atmosphere for a movie of this sort where there are long, long waits while things are being setup, where the scenes aren’t that intense. You can’t really get lost in the dialogue of an X-Men movie. So it’s very good to have the leader keeping everyone’s spirits up and that’s what he does.
HW: You have a scene in which Magento is hurling cars off the Golden Gate Bridge…
IM: Is that what I was doing? I never quite knew [Laughs].
HW: Exactly our point. Is it difficult to get into the scenes that are going to require a lot of FX and CGI to fully realize on screen?
IM: Well, we had the Golden Gate Bridge there. It was built in Vancouver, Canada–the remnants of it. It was the bridge after it landed on Alcatraz. So you didn’t have to use your imagination. There it was. The actual flying through the air, yeah, you have to use your imagination, but we were on a bit of metalized road and there were lights and there was a breeze. The wind was blowing in our hair and our cloaks and it felt as if you were flying a bit. They just have to tell you what it’s going to be like, what it is that you’re doing and then they report as to whether it looks convincing on the monitor as you’re waving your arms around. There is a lot of the filming that is of that sort, and you just have to take it on trust, but that’s all right. You understand that the magic of filming is often after the actors have long since vanished when everything else is put together.
HW: Were you surprised by Fox’s plans to develop a prequel film starring the young Magneto?
IM: Well, I’m not surprised. That’s what the comics have been doing for years. They’ve been having prequels and sequels and changing the plot, going back to the past, and it would be an obvious thing to do to have a young Magneto story.
HW: Who’d be your pick to take on the role of the young Magneto?
IM: Well, I’ll be playing the part [Laughs]. The first time that Patrick Stewart appear in this film, we appear to be 25 years younger than we are. And that’s been done by a technology that’s never been used before, which involved no makeup, no special FX whatsoever. We just go into the studio and do the scene as is and then they morph our faces onto photographs of ourselves 25 years ago, and low and behold there we are. They can take any shape of person, and they can build you down. They can build you up. They can bring out your shoulders and change the color and style of hair, and remove every wrinkle. They removed so many wrinkles from my face and I look so young that Brett said, “You’ve got to put a few wrinkles back. It looks ridiculous.” So that means that I could easily play myself at 25, as long as I can keep myself lithe and sounding young. I mean, that’s the big story of this movie–once the stars realize that they don’t have to facelifts anymore, at least as far as their work is concerned is amazing. I can go on playing Romeo and Juliet for the next twenty or thirty years with no problem. It’s astonishing. It’s like airbrushing, but for the moving picture.
HW: You narrated The Saint of 9/11, a documentary film about Father Michael Judge, a chaplain with the New York Fire Department that recently premiered at the Tribecca Film Festival. What made you want to be a part of that project?
IM: Well, I was in Manhattan on the day that the planes went into the two towers, and I remember going down to Ground Zero before most other people had done that. The air was thick with concrete and God knows what else, and there were little knots of people who were sort of sheltering from the impact of that day. It was very, very quiet and there was no traffic, of course. It was just me and my friends walking down the street. There were some ambulance people, and then there were some other overweight policemen, black mostly, and as we went by one of them said “Hi. Magneto.” I thought that it was absolutely extraordinary that it should matter that the actor who played in X-Men was walking by on that particular day. I thought, “Well, maybe the world is going to get back to normal quite soon.” That was the day after Father Michael Judge had died. He refused not to be with his friends and his men, his colleagues in the fire department, and against the advice of the mayor he went back into the building and was struck on the head and died. This was a film in his memory. It was then revealed that he was gay. So it was a gay priest who was suddenly the hero of the hour, and I thought that was an important thing that the world should know about because very often gay people are thought to be not quite normal, or not quite as good as the rest of the population. But here was a man who was clearly better than all of us, and the fact that he was gay was an impulse for me. They also wanted an openly gay man to underline that by doing the narration, and so I did it.
