Sir Ian McKellen is one of the most celebrated stage actors of his generation, a five-time Olivier Award winner and Tony Award winner whose six-decade career has taken him from regional repertory to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, Broadway and back to the West End in landmark productions of Shakespeare and beyond.
RSC and National Theatre highlights: Macbeth, Richard II, Coriolanus, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, Wild Honey, Bent
West End and Broadway highlights: Amadeus, Richard III, Dance of Death, Waiting for Godot, No Man’s Land, King Lear,
Player Kings
Recent stage credits: King Lear (2017 to 2018), Ian McKellen on Stage (2019), Hamlet (2021), The Cherry Orchard (2021), Player Kings (2024), King Lear at The Yard (2026 to 2027)
Ian Murray McKellen was born on 25 May 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, and grew up in nearby Wigan and Bolton. He was educated at Bolton School, where he first acted, and read English at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he honed his craft alongside contemporaries including Derek Jacobi and Trevor Nunn.
McKellen made his professional stage debut in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, as a member of its repertory company. He spent his early career working in regional theatre across the UK and made his West End debut in 1965.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, McKellen became a defining figure at both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. His acclaimed 1976 RSC production of Macbeth opposite Judi Dench, directed by Trevor Nunn at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, is widely regarded as one of the great Shakespeare productions of the 20th century and was later filmed for television.
He took on many of Shakespeare’s greatest roles during this period including Hamlet, Iago, Richard II and Romeo, as well as classical work by Chekhov, Ibsen and Marlowe.
McKellen has won the Laurence Olivier Award five times, more than almost any other actor of his generation.
His Olivier-winning performances are:
McKellen made his Broadway debut in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, playing Antonio Salieri opposite Tim Curry’s Mozart.
The role won him the 1981 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, cementing his transatlantic reputation.
For more than a decade McKellen toured his celebrated one-man show Acting Shakespeare around the UK, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. The production raised significant funds for AIDS charities and helped introduce a global audience to his Shakespearean work.
In 1988, McKellen came out publicly as gay during a BBC radio debate on Section 28. He became a co-founder of the LGBTQ+ rights organisation Stonewall and has remained one of the most influential campaigners for equal rights in the UK. He was knighted in 1991 and made a Companion of Honour in 2008.
McKellen returned to King Lear in 2017 in a Chichester Festival Theatre production directed by Jonathan Munby, which transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in 2018 to widespread acclaim. In 2021 he proved his theatrical stamina by playing an age-defying Hamlet at the Theatre Royal Windsor, then switching to play the elderly servant Firs in The Cherry Orchard in the same season.
In 2019, McKellen embarked on a marathon 80th-birthday solo tour titled Ian McKellen on Stage, performing in more than 80 regional theatres across the UK before transferring to the West End. The tour raised over £5 million for those theatres and, in the same year, McKellen became the first actor to top The Stage 100 list of the most influential figures in British theatre.
In 2024 McKellen took on the role of Falstaff in Robert Icke’s Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre, an adaptation that distilled Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 into a single epic evening. He was forced to leave the production after a fall from the stage during a performance.
McKellen returns to King Lear for a third time in a new production at The Yard Theatre‘s new London home, playing from November 2026 to January 2027. The production forms part of The Yard’s inaugural season in its new building.
