Quotes from Ian Mckellen

I'm brilliant at cooking my stepmother's scrambled egg recipe. The secret is to put eggs, butter, milk, and seasoning together in the saucepan, and to keep stirring with a wooden spoon under a low heat until the preferred consistency is reached.

I just followed my parents' example and advice on living, which was to leave the world a better place than you found it. They were professional do-gooders, ministers of the church, social workers, teachers, and missionaries, that sort of thing.

When I've been asked what should be on my gravestone, I've said: 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out.' Two big achievements.

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

I suspect the base that I'm working from is not particularly one of inquiry, but of memory of what I did last time.

Establishing the rights for gay people to be married would cost the Australian government nothing financially and would gain for you worldwide respect from people like us and, of course, would change lives enormously - the lives of gay people and of their friends and of their families and therefore of Australia as a whole.

The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.

Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?

Most actors are not rich - they are very poor indeed. What keeps them going is that they just love the job.

Why not celebrate those who want to marry and bring up a family?