Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Sir Ian McKellen has a confession to make.
His most famous line, in a celebrated film and TV career that has lasted 60 years – Gandalf’s “You shall not pass!” in the Lord of the Rings trilogy – was a mistake. “Don’t tell anybody, but I got it wrong,” one of Britain’s greatest actors says over Zoom from his London home. “The actual line in the book is ‘You cannot pass’.
Quite whether I did that with the connivance of Peter Jackson, the director, I don’t know, but Tolkien it ain’t.” “The first question I always ask myself when I read a script is, ‘is this a movie that I would want to see?’” : Ian McKellen as theatre critic Jimmy Erskine and Gemma Arterton as actress Nina Land in The Critic. Credit: Transmission Films McKellen, now 85, is waiting to hear whether Jackson wants him to be involved in two planned new Middle Earth instalments that will start with Andy Serkis directing and starring in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum .
“He’s producing some films about some of the characters who we know from the blockbusting movies, and if Gandalf turns out to be one of them I think I shall be invited to return Down Under, and I would do that with great pleasure,” he says. Loading Even away from Middle Earth, McKellen is s.
