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