everyone's a critic!

Sir Ian McKellen gets honest about critics, his historic gay kiss & the queer appeal of the X-Men

By Cameron Scheetz September 12, 2024 at 11:00am

Over 60 years into an illustrious career on stage and screen, Sir Ian McKellen doesn’t give a damn what critics say—unless it’s something nice!

As with most actors, McKellen’s relationship to the art of artistic analysis has had its up and downs, and he’s used his experience on the receiving end of reviews (the good and the bad) as fuel for his starring role in the dramatic period piece thriller The Critic, from Shopgirl director Anand Tucker.

With a script from Notes On A Scandal‘s Patrick Marber, the film finds the 85-year-old legend playing Jimmy Erskine, a revered and feared London theater critic at odds with his newspaper’s new ownership which prefers what they print to be more family—and fascist—friendly.

Like McKellen, Jimmy is gay, but the critic only shares this with a few of his closest confidantes—it’s the ’30s, after all, and being caught with another man could get him thrown in jail. When he’s forced to fight for his livelihood, Jimmy resorts to doing what he does best: drafting up a tangled scheme that will involve his secret lover (Alfred Enoch), a beleaguered actress (Gemma Arterton), her secret lover (Ben Barnes), her mother (Lesley Manville), and the paper’s prickly editor (Mark Strong).

Image Credit: ‘The Critic,’ True Brit Entertainment

Needless to say, it’s one of the venerated performer’s juiciest screen roles in quite a few years. And while you could call Jimmy Erskine an antihero, McKellen is quick to point out the character’s thornier qualities are not because he’s a critic, but rather because he’s a victim of an unjust society, fighting back in whatever way he can—and wouldn’t we do the same?

Clearly, McKellen invests a lot of himself in his characters. It’s that same care and intentionality he brings to all of his work, whether he’s playing Macbeth or Magneto. Simply put, he loves to act, and we’ve been lucky enough to watch him do it brilliantly for decades now.

Though McKellen sustained injuries from an on-stage fall earlier this year, we were delighted to find him in good health and high spirits when we logged on for a Zoom conversation with him in support of The Critic‘s theatrical release. In a delightful and wide-ranging interview, the thespian opens up about how his own relationship to critics has changed over the years, reflects on being part of a history-making gay kiss on television, and responds to former co-star Alan Cumming’s comment that X2: X-Men United was “the gayest film” he’d ever done.

You can watch our full interview with Sir Ian McKellen above, and read some highlights from the conversation below.

Sir Ian McKellen on how he’s recovering from his on-stage fall earlier this year:

“Everybody trips, all day long. You don’t really notice it until you’re in your 80s because, if you trip then, you probably fall, and if you fall, you probably break something. I had a fractured wrist and a chip on my vertebrae in my neck—that’s all sorted itself out slower than I would have liked, and now I’m left with a little bit of aches and pains, but that can be dealt with through exercise. So, I’m going to check the rest of the year off, but I have some nice jobs coming up next year.”

On relating to Jimmy Erskine, his thorny lead character in The Critic:

“Jimmy Erskine behaves as he does—which is in a ruthless, cruel way, at times—because the world has been ruthless and cruel [to him] because of his sexuality. He’s a gay man, and of course, in the 1930s in the United Kingdom, [that meant] you had been born a criminal if you made love. So, it’s a private matter for him, he’s closeted. If he visits the cruelty of society against himself upon his own victims, we shouldn’t be too surprised! Along with that, he has a great love for the theater and is desperately upset when what he sees on stage—in his view—isn’t good enough, and so the spite and the wickedness come out in his words. He is a softy at heart, Jimmy, but he’s got this armor of his wit and his perceptions and his honesty, really, about what he sees.”

On how his relationship with critics has changed over the years:

“I don’t pay them any attention… now. We’re living in an age when it’s not just people who have a job to be a critic and write for a national newspaper. Today, everyone is a critic, quite rightly! Every member of an audience is a critic, they have views, they have responses. But now sometimes, unfortunately, we read those responses online often before the professional critics have had a chance to see the show in question. And so the power of the critics has gone considerably.

I mean, there was a time when you couldn’t hope to have a success on Broadway unless The New York Times gave you at least a good review… When I started out, I was highly praised by the professional critics, and I’m very grateful to the reviews I had because the word went around that, ‘oh, here’s an actor worth watching.’ But now I’ve been alive longer than anyone who might be writing about me, and I would like them to enjoy my work, but if they don’t, I’m not going to get too upset!”

On sharing a historic gay kiss with the late James Laurenson in Edward II:

“[Edward II] is by Christopher Marlowe, who was born the same year as Shakespeare, and whose career as a very successful playwright was cut short when he was murdered in circumstances that had never been quite analyzed or understood. He was himself gay, Marlowe, and in writing Edward II, I think he wrote the first play ever with the leading part as a gay man, and you just had to accept that. Maybe that’s why the play hasn’t been done that often.

When we revived it long ago, in 1969 at the Edinburgh Festival, we were performing in the premises of the Church of Scotland, and a member of that church—who was a local councilor, a politician—said that two men should not be seen kissing on the those premises. That got such notice in the local press and conversation that, of course, we ended up having full houses! People rooted us out and found us.

Ah, Jimmy Lawrence, whose lips I can imagine to this day. In the audition, he was told he would have to kiss me. He said, ‘Well, should I kiss him, now?’ He did, and bless him he got the part. It was a thrill to do that play—for it to be criticized and then accepted, was very important. And people tell me that, when the TV version was shown in America, people said, ‘I’d never seen two men kiss, and it helped me.'”

On Alan Cumming calling X2 his “gayest film” & the X-Men’s queer appeal:

“Alan, as usual, was joking. I don’t know about ‘gay,’ but camp? Yes! Oh those costumes? Those helmets?

I was told by [Marvel that] X-men was their favorite publication, and they said that the demographic for the readers of the comic were young Blacks, young gays, and young Jews—all those categories have been ill-treated by the laws of the land and by people’s behavior. The message—that because you were different didn’t mean that you were inferior, and that you might, in some senses, be superior—was a message that young people in those categories responded to, and I respond to as well.

And then the argument between Professor X, Patrick Stewart’s part, and Magneto, my part, is reflected in most civil rights movements. Do we fit in, do we argue the point, or do we go out on the streets and cause a fuss? Well, my temperament leads me to the former, but I was very happy to play the Malcolm X of the X-Men universe.”

The Critic opens in select theaters on September 13.

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2 Comments*

  • mgascoigne9

    I saw Ian McKellen in one of those AMC broadcasts of live Shakespearean theatre. It was a production of King Lear and he played the titular role. It was a fabulously acted performance by everyone involved. I look forward to seeing his new film.

  • Man About Town

    I loved him as Salieri in “Amadeus.” Tim Curry was also great as Mozart. Jane Seymour was acted off the stage by her costumes.

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