The 56th Berlin International Film Festival will award this year’s Honorary Golden Bears for lifetime achievement to the Polish filmmaker and screenwriter Andrzej Wajda and the British actor Sir Ian McKellen. With Sir Ian McKellen, the Berlinale is honouring one of Britain’s most legendary actors of the stage and screen. By 1974 he was already a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since then he has enthralled audiences around the globe as the eponymous protagonist in the screen adaptation of Richard III (1995), as well as for his performances in X-Men films and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 1999 Sir Ian McKellen was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Hollywood director James Whale in Gods and Monster. He was again nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Gandalf in the first episode of Lord of the Rings. The actor, who was knighted in 1990, starred in David MacKenzie’s Asylum (2004), which was screened at last year’s Berlinale Competition. [More]
Category: Ian McKellen
Asylum stars Natasha Richardson in an unsettling psychological thriller about the repressed, 1950s wife of a psychiatrist and her affair with a convicted killer (Marton Csokas). Stella, Max, and their son Charlie move to a high-security psychiatric hospital, where the priggish Max joins the staff and hopes to ascend, in time, to the top spot, replacing the soon-to-retire hospital director. Standing in Max’s way is another doctor, Cleave (Ian McKellen), who takes a quiet yet somehow sinister interest in unhappy Stella’s apparent attraction to Edgar (Csokas). [More]
Jenna writes: Ian McKellen will be on TV in the UK tonight (Jan 16th) on the tv show ‘The Bigger Picture with Graham Norton’ at 10.35pm on BBC1.
Allison writes: The episodes of ‘Coronation Street’ that Ian McKellen guest starred in have finally turned up on CBC. ‘Coronation Street’ airs on CBC TV weekdays at 7:30PM .If you missed it, all five episodes are played on Sunday mornings from 7:30 – 10:00 A.M. I guess in the States you should check your local PBS stations.
Elen writes: I want to tell you guys about a great charity auction going on right now that includes items from Orlando Bloom and Sir Ian Mckellen. It’s called Blue Jeans for Genes, and it benefits the National Hemophilia Foundation. Hemophilia is a debilitating and incurable blood disorder where the patient’s blood doesn’t clot. It’s treatable, but sometimes very hard to live with. Check it out! [More]
The website movies.msn.com, it lists a British magazine’s poll of the greatest living movie stars over the age of 50. It has actors Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee in the top 20. [More]