If you couldn’t catch Sir Ian McKellen on stage as King Lear, then tune in this week when the PBS program, Great Performances, features the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production. After airing March 25th on TV, (check the site for show times in your area), the play, originally staged in Stratford-upon-Avon in the spring of 2007, will be available online.
Category: Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen has been thought of as one of the world’s great actors for more than half his life. But in the last decade, he has also transformed himself from a strict stage thespian – highly rated, seen by very few – into a big screen star.
He combines high art and mass appeal once more next year when filming beings on The Hobbit, a fourth movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, in which he will again appear as the great wizard Gandalf.
McKellen claims no great strategy for combining critical and commercial success. “How am I expected to make sense of a career which has basically been about me enjoying myself and hoping people would come to see me too?”
For the rest of the article click on the link. Time
Our very own MrCere, Larry Curtis, was a guest on last Sunday’s broadcast of ‘Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib,’ on WNJC 1360 AM, Philadelphia at 11AM ET. As always, it was broadcast live via the internet via the WNJC website. A full transcript of the radio segment can be found below (thanks to Deleece Cook!). TheOneRing.net is featured every other week on Fictional Frontiers. Continue reading “Fictional Frontiers Radio Transcript”
Sir Ian McKellen”Lord of the Rings” fans, don’t expect the highly anticipated “The Hobbit” prequel to be another “Lord of the Rings.” Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the trilogy, will return for “The Hobbit,” but said his approach won’t be that of reprising a character he’s played before. He’ll instead be reacting to the new material with a fresh perspective on his character.
“We’re not remaking the ‘Lord of the Rings,’ we’re going to do ‘The Hobbit’ and what Gandalf has to do in that will be different line by line, scene by scene than the trilogy,” McKellen told writers at the TV Critics Press Tour in Hollywood. “All that’s going back to the character. It’s going back to a whole new set of circumstances.” McKellen: ‘Hobbit’ Won’t Be ‘Rings’ Remake
Daniel Fienberg sends this along: What better way to kick off this January’s Television Critics Association press tour than with Sir Ian McKellen discussing his upcoming Great Performances version of “King Lear,” which he acknowledges is generally a career-capping role for most Shakespearean actors. “If, like me, you’ve worked your way through Shakespeare as an actor, waiting up there is King Lear and beyond him a shadowy Prospero maybe or a Falstaff,” says McKellen, who admits to being terrified of Falstaff. McKellen adds, “It’s the challenge. It’s the expectation that it will complete your journey through Shakespeare.” Of course, no matter how much acclaim McKellen gets for his stage work, he knows that he’ll always be recognized in the street for something different. Press Tour: King Lear is semi-nude and Gandalf may be gay