It seems Sir Ian McKellen was mistaken for a beggar as he sat outside a theater in costume according to an article in the UK’s Telegraph.

In the article he said, “During the dress rehearsal of Godot, I crouched by the stage door of the Comedy Theatre, getting some air, my bowler hat at my feet (and) seeing an unkempt old man down on his luck, a passer-by said, ‘Need some help, brother?’ and put a dollar in my hat.” You can read the whole story and see a funny photo right here.

From whatsplaying.com Speaking to Melbourne’s Play yesterday, Sir Ian McKellen – currently appearing in an Australian production of Waiting for Godot at the Comedy Theatre – says he had expected to start work on the first of the two Hobbit movies a few weeks ago. “That should have started in April but they didn’t contact me about a contract until a few weeks ago and we’re in negotiation”, the actor, who’d be reprising his Lord of the Rings‘ role Gandalf for the film, said. “I shall see (director) Guillermo del Toro and (executive producer) Peter Jackson when I’m in New Zealand after we’ve been to Australia and well find out more then.” More..

The actor Andy Serkis, who so memorably played Gollum and King Kong using performance capture, has announced the UK’s first studio specialising in the technique. As he told a recent British Screen Advisory Council discussion on working with digital film technology, Serkis caught the bug of “cyber-thespianism” working with Peter Jackson at his Weta studios in New Zealand, first on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and then on King Kong. He has since directed performance capture for two video games, one in America and one in New Zealand. That made him wonder why the same facility wasn’t available in Britain, when so much of the original technology was developed out of Oxford and Cambridge. More..