Ian McKellen: The Player

Many of them did — to both acclaim and fame. Kingsley took the lead, and an Oscar, for Gandhi in 1982. Stewart stepped into the uniform of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 1987's Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dench took the lead in a British sitcom, A Fine Romance, and then hit the big time in 1995, when she played M in the James Bond films, and four years later, when she won an Oscar for her eight minutes in Shakespeare in Love. (See pictures of the best Oscar dresses.)

McKellen didn't follow his friends to Hollywood at first. Though he left Stratford for London and Broadway — where he won a Tony Award in 1981 for his role as Salieri in Amadeus — he stuck with the theater. In 1988, he came out on BBC radio during a debate over a British law, Section 28, which restricted how schools approached homosexuality. He went on to cofound Stonewall, a gay and lesbian rights lobby group, and regularly leads marches and protests across Europe (joking to the crowds that they should call him "Serena" after he was knighted in 1991).

It was campaigning that finally introduced McKellen to the joys of mass appeal. "If you spend most of your time being a classical actor, you do feel you are not quite in touch with what is going on in the street," he says. "The minute you talk about gay people, you are in touch, you are making a difference, you do really join the human race. It was very satisfying to me."

Encouraged, McKellen decided to join the human race as an actor too. He still takes classical theater roles, touring the world as Peter Sorin in Chekhov's The Seagull in 2007 and as King Lear in 2008. But he now also does blockbusters, investing Gandalf with impressive gravitas in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and reveling in superior evil as Magneto in the X-Men films. And, yes, television too: a 10-week part as an author in Coronation Street, Britain's biggest soap; an Emmy-nominated turn as a hyper-homosexual version of himself in Ricky Gervais' comedy series, Extras; and, of course, The Prisoner. (See pictures of Ricky Gervais.)

McKellen says celebrity has allowed him to finally relax as an actor. "The Lord of The Rings changed my life," he says. "[Becoming a star] confirmed that all that hard work, getting good as an actor, had paid off. People now accept that I am what I always wanted to be." The proof, says McKellen, is that he can afford to be "a bit cheeky" in the roles he chooses. What he means is that he can do precisely what he wants. And he's achieved that by doing exactly as he pleases. Which, whenever the curtain does finally fall, wouldn't be a bad obituary.

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