In the Spotlight Series: WAITING FOR GODOT & NO MAN'S LAND's Ian McKellen

McKellen has been honored with more than 40 international awards for his performances on screen and stage. When last onstage in San Francisco in Shakespeare's Richard III, he was adapting the play for the cinema, which was filmed entirely on location in London. He was born in 1939 and raised in the industrial north of England. He started acting professionally in 1961. He has regularly been leading man for the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre of Great Britain and on the West End stage in Shakespeare and a wide range of classic and new plays. For Sean Mathias, he was Max in Bent, Uncle Vanya, and an outrageous Widow Twankey in the Old Vic's Christmas pantomime. McKellen has often worked on stage in the USA. In New York, he won every available award for his Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1981). His solo show Acting Shakespeare packed theatres across the States and is now a teaching aid throughout the country. In 2001, he returned to Broadway in Dance of Death, again directed by Sean Mathias, and hosted Saturday Night Live. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2004. Most recently, he played King Lear for the RSC at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music. McKellen has starred in more than 40 movies. In 1996, he co-produced, co- scripted, and starred in his film adaptation ofRichard III. After Stephen King's Apt Pupil, he achieved his first Oscar nomination as film director James Whale in Gods and Monsters. He was the villain in The Da Vinci Code, the mutant Magneto in four X-Men films (with Patrick Stewart), and the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and again in the record-breaking The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey. His latest venture is Vicious, the UK itv sitcom with Derek Jacobi. His full career details can be found at mckellen.com.