I never thought I’d play Hitler, but someone once asked me to and it was a jolly good script!’ Have you always wanted to play Sherlock Holmes? It’s an incredibly controlled performance, packed with pathos and subtlety: not as crowd-pleasing, perhaps, as Gandalf or Magneto, but every bit as memorable. We’re at the Langham Hotel in central London to discuss ‘ Mr Holmes’, in which the 75-year-old McKellen dons ageing make-up to play a 90-year-old Sherlock Holmes, who’s living in a quiet corner of post-WWII Sussex until an old case rears its head. But like any stage veteran, he does occasionally show his thespian streak: grabbing his back theatrically to evoke the aches of old age, or grinning slyly as he recounts a cheeky anecdote about working with Will Smith. Whether he’s glad-handing ‘X-Men’ fans on the red carpet, defending gay rights in his role as co-founder of Stonewall or saving Middle Earth as Gandalf the Grey, Ian McKellen is the calm eye of whatever storm happens to be raging.Īnd he’s just as laidback in person, spending a fair portion of our interview umm-ing, aah-ing and gazing wistfully out of the window – not in a senior-moment sort of way, but with the confident demeanour of a man who simply refuses to be hurried. Meant as a campy play on ‘Sir Ian’, it’s an oddly appropriate nickname for an actor who exudes an air of such immaculate serenity. Paul wanders around a plush New York apartment, completely engrossing the Kittredge family with his rehearsed insight: “Why has imagination become a synonym for style? I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world.” Smith is a towering figure in modern cinema, and were he only to heed the advice here and opt to make more of a connection with the real world.His close friends call him ‘Serena’. In it he describes how the word ‘imagination’ has become a tradable commodity rather than a device we use to rationalise the highly uncomfortably realities of the world around us. Arguably one of the most remarkable scenes of Smith’s acting career is Paul’s monologue describing his thesis on the JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Little did Smith know that he would be relegated to these sorts of lists for much of his career. It is a provocative line of dialogue, with an even more provocative denouement. And also they must have some new blacks.” This is never more distinctly evident then when Ian McKellen’s South African businessman, Geoffrey, suggests to Flan Kittredge (Donald Sutherland) that he should bring in Sidney Poitier to host a black film festival. “With this Spike Lee you have now, and of course get Poitier down to be the president of the jury, and I know Cosby, and I love this Eddie Murphy and my wife went fishing in Norway with Diana Ross and her new Norwegian husband. Essentially Smith (and the film) is mocking the assumptions of the those who suggest that you have to adopt a white manner to succeed in the White media. Both of these characters are plucked from Smith’s own persona, as the clean cut rapper and successful darling of American television, and the African American role model from humble beginnings in West Philadelphia. On the other, there’s Paul: well spoken, intelligent and charismatic. On the one hand there is the fast-talking prostitute who seduces a prodigal son of a New York high-roller to teaching him the finer points of a bourgeois lifestyle. In Paul, he is gifted with a character of extreme duality. Where the stiff upper lip meets the nose in a show of overtly restrained emotion.
Bad Boys also birthed the infamous Will Smith pout, indicating when something bad has happened – over played to infinity in his later, quasi-serious roles such fare as 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness and 2008’s Seven Pounds.
His follow-up role, as Detective Mike Lowrey in 1995’s Bad Boys, does not offer half the range that we saw in his early turns in films like Made In America and Six Degrees. His portrayal of a gay man, supposedly the son of the real Sidney Poitier, who comes to call on affluent art dealers Flan and Ouisa Kittredge, is one of most creative, powerful and dedicated roles to date. Smith’s acting career has been… let’s say, mildly erratic – it has been a long time since he really got his hands dirty. How do you bring the musical Cats to the big screen? The aftermath of this joke, however, did not lead to a deep consideration of how Hooper will tackle the subject of TS Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’, but rather a fond remembrance of Smith’s incredible performance as Paul. In it, the enigmatic Paul (Will Smith) outlines a set quandaries that must have recently passed through the mind of Hooper. It is a altered quote from Fred Schepisi’s 1993 adaptation of John Guare’s hit play, Six Degrees of Separation.
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