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" When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that - in real life - I wasn't doing. "

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" I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 - 1976) lived and painted. "

" The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting. "

" I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them. "

" I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. "

" There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage. "

" I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things. "

" When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality. "

" What I particularly like about Broadway is the camaraderie and the friendship of other people in other shows. Everybody knows you're opening and cares about you. There's a real village atmosphere. "

" There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud. "

" My own death threats have declined considerably. "

" There's no sex in Middle Earth. "

" I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around. "

" We're very lucky, men, that there are these fabulous parts. Women - once you've done all the parts in Shakespeare, they start running out. So you can pick and choose and find something to energise you. "

" I've always felt that 'X-Men' was about something serious. It wasn't just fantasy. "

" I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.' "

" I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me. "

" Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience. "

" One thing Middle-earth is short on is the feminine. "

" I live for the text. It's my job. "

" I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly. "

" I often get mistaken for Dumbledore. One wizard is very much like another. "

" Every anti-gay remark from the Church gives the thug a license to be cruel. "

" I have little routines in the theater. Once I've established something, like the order of putting on makeup and a costume, I have to invariably do it in the same order every time, even if I only did it by chance the first time round. "

" Because I was in the business of translating the 'X-Men' from the very successful comics, and taking the most popular book of the 20th century in 'The Lord of the Rings,' and making it into three movies, I hope people realize I wouldn't get involved in anything I didn't think was really going to be worth their while. "

" Actors don't, in fact, retire, do they? It took me a while to remember that. "

" There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore. "

" I don't really like being with people my own age for long periods, because all we talk about is our decrepitude, how the world is changing for the worse even though it isn't. "

" I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard. "

" The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears. "

" It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier. "