After his coming out as gay to his stepmother, Gladys McKellen, who was a Quaker, he said, "Not only was she not fazed, but as a member of a society which declared its indifference to people's sexuality years back, I think she was just glad for my sake that I wasn't lying anymore." His great-great-grandfather Robert J. "My upbringing was of low nonconformist Christians who felt that you led the Christian life in part by behaving in a Christian manner to everybody you met." When he was 12, his mother died of breast cancer his father died when he was 24. His home environment was strongly Christian, but non-orthodox. Both of McKellen's grandfathers were preachers, and his great-great-grandfather, James McKellen, was a "strict, evangelical Protestant minister" in Ballymena, County Antrim. McKellen's father was a civil engineer and lay preacher, and was of Protestant Irish and Scottish descent. did I realise that war wasn't normal." When an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, McKellen said: "Well, darling, you forget-I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old." The experience of living through the war as a young child had a lasting impact on him, and he later said that "only after peace resumed. They lived there until Ian was twelve years old, before relocating to Bolton in 1951, after his father had been promoted.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, his family moved to Wigan. He was their second child, with a sister, Jean, five years his senior.
McKellen was born on in Burnley, Lancashire, the son of Margery Lois (née Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen.
In 1981 he received his first Tony Award nomination and win for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. In the 1970s, McKellen became a stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain. In 1969, he was invited to join the Prospect Theatre Company to play the lead parts in Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II, and he firmly established himself as one of the country's foremost classical actors. In 1965, McKellen made his first West End appearance.
He started his professional career in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre as a member of their highly regarded repertory company. A recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK, McKellen is regarded as a British cultural icon. The BBC states that his "performances have guaranteed him a place in the canon of English stage and film actors". He achieved worldwide fame for his film roles, including the titular King in Richard III (1995), James Whale in Gods and Monsters (1998), Magneto in the X-Men films, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. He has also received nominations for two Academy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, and four BAFTAs. Over his career he has received numerous awards including seven Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. His career spans seven decades, having performed in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Sir Ian Murray McKellen CH CBE (born ) is an English actor.