Ian McKellenSir Ian McKellen hasn’t spent his entire acting career aching to play Shakespeare’s King Lear. “I thought it was beyond me,” the veteran English actor said, surprisingly. “It was never a part I wanted to play. I knew, from having seen other people play it up close, that it takes an awful lot out of you. “You can’t throw off a King Lear. You have to delve into it.” McKellen never too old to be young