Sir Ian McKellen: Closer to Holmes

Sir Ian McKellen in Mr Holmes. Photo / Supplied

Ian McKellen has hung up his wizard staff to take on the cloak of literature’s greatest man of mystery.

"Will I miss living so far away from home in New Zealand? No, I won't," says Ian McKellen.

"But will I miss New Zealand? Yes, of course, I will!"

Sir Ian McKellen is reflecting on the large amount of time he has spent in Wellington over the past two decades as he starred as Gandalf the Grey, first in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and more recently the three-part The Hobbit.

The Manchester-born actor's latest film Mr. Holmes allowed him to work considerably closer to his London home as it was mostly filmed on the English south coast where it is set. Based on Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, Mr. Holmes is directed by Bill Condon, with whom McKellen previously worked on 1998's Gods and Monsters.

Depicting Arthur Conan Doyle's famous sleuth in the final years of his life, it sees him looking back on the only mystery that he couldn't solve.

"Sherlock is living in a very real place," says McKellen, who found much he could relate to in Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay. "It's 1944 and he's still alive, and I was also alive in 1944."

As well as Gandalf, McKellen portrayed Magneto in several X-Men movies, so it seems he is taking bringing another classic character to life in the form of Sherlock Holmes very much in his stride.

"You can talk about myths and icons," he says. "But I've also played Hamlet, and a lot of other actors have played Hamlet as well, so you can't let things like that put you off."

Although few other performers have so far played either J.R.R. Tolkien's mighty wizard or the nefarious mutant leader on the big or small screen, there have been many other adaptations of Sherlock Holmes' numerous adventures, on film, television or the stage.

"A lot of people have played him," says McKellen. "I looked on Google and it said that there were 70 actors who had played Sherlock Holmes, and many of them are still alive, so I just thought 'oh well'."

Sir Ian McKellen in Mr Holmes. Photo / Supplied

In The Hobbit McKellen worked alongside Benedict Cumberbatch - Sherlock in the popular BBC series - and Martin Freeman, who is his trusty partner, Watson, in the modern-day reboot.

"Martin couldn't understand that I'd made a movie that doesn't have John Watson in it," laughs McKellen. "A great Sherlock for me was Jeremy Brett," he continues, referring to the late British actor, who took on the lead in the 1980s in Granada's acclaimed Sherlock Holmes TV series. "With that, you've got a very troubled man but then he's living in a world of troubled people, trying to help them."

Although he is a mere 76 years old, McKellen had to don a prosthetic nose and makeup to embody the now 93-year-old Sherlock. Having retreated to a remote cottage in rural Sussex, he is content to spend his time tending his beehives before his growing discontent with the long-deceased Watson's published account of their final, controversial assignment causes the traumatic events of the past to come flooding back.

"He's battling against old age and looking back on his last case, which sent him into retirement 60 years ago," says McKellen, who reveals that rather than the colourful character of Watson's fanciful stories, this Sherlock is the supposed real deal, having been shorn of all his unnecessary paraphernalia.

"This is actually meant to be the real Holmes, as the Holmes everybody knows is essentially fiction," he says. "He's like 'I never smoked a pipe, I've always smoked cigars!' and 'A deerstalker? I wouldn't be seen dead in one!' It's a nice take and you begin to believe that 'my God, there was a real person called Sherlock Holmes!'"

More than a century since Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet made its debut in 1887, McKellen is at a loss to explain the reasons for his enduring appeal. "I wish I knew," he admits. "I opened an exhibition about Sherlock Holmes at the Museum of London last year and the byline for that was 'a man who never lived and who will never die'. I guess people just like detective stories, don't they? He was the first big fictional detective, and the stories are very much available as children can read them, and an adult can as well. Probably most people have not read J.R.R. Tolkien but then an awful lot of people have read them. He's a rather attractive, elegant figure, who is a much darker character in our film than he is with most other Sherlocks that you see now."

With the release last Christmas of the concluding The Hobbit instalment, The Battle of the Five Armies, it would be easy to presume that McKellen is relieved to have finally put Gandalf well and truly behind him. But with the vague possibility of Peter Jackson tackling J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, he is not so sure the affable wizard is really gone for good. "You could imagine all sorts of things and that I might be sad that it's all over," he says. "But judging from past experiences, there's no certainty that it is. So is it time to be moving on to other things? Well, I've been getting on to other things for a while now. Middle Earth has been a big part of my life, and I shall always be grateful."

Mr. Holmes opens on Thursday.