Xoanon here, seems our reports about Sean Connery being Gandalf all those years ago were NOT far from the truth!
It has emerged that Sir Ian McKellan was not the first choice to play pointy-hatted wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film. Bizarrely, the film’s makers first offered the role to Sean Connery, of all people, who turned it down as soon as he had read the script. ‘I had never read Tolkien, and I didn’t understand the script when they sent it to me. Bobbits? Hobbits?’ [More]