McKellen does 'DaVinci,' turns mutant again with X-Men

LOS ANGELES -- Forget busy summers. Ian McKellen has more big-screen action packed into the month of May than most British stage actors could hope for in a career.\nIn the adaptation of Dan Brown's best seller "The Da Vinci Code," McKellen plays Sir Leigh Teabing, the sinfully wealthy, polio-afflicted aristocrat who joins Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou's characters on their quest for the Holy Grail.\nA week later, McKellen reprises his role as Magneto, a villainous mutant who uses his ability to control metals to take on his heroic fellow freaks of nature in "X-Men: The Last Stand," the third film in the franchise.\nThis from an actor who's already got a monumental film project behind him as Gandalf, the sagacious wizard from "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, a role that earned him his second Academy Awards nomination after 1998's "Gods and Monsters."\nMcKellen -- who turns 67 the day before the May 26 U.S. debut of "X-Men: The Last Stand" -- is a latecomer to Hollywood after decades as one of England's leading theatrical performers.\nAn outspoken gay-rights activist since declaring his homosexuality in the late 1980s, McKellen likens fear of mutants in "X-Men" with societal homophobia.\nAP: Your early career was largely on stage, with roles here and there in film or television. How odd was it to suddenly become a movie star in your 60s?\nMcKellen: I can't really believe it, nor can anyone else, actually. It is an unusual thing to happen, because I'm not yet as old as people perhaps think I am. Gandalf was 7,000 years old. And I've got another 10 years in me, probably, of capering. So I'm just extremely lucky and grateful, and if it hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have missed it, to tell you the truth.\nAP: What's Magneto up to this time in "X-Men."\nMcKellen: I do like this story, because this begins in the Oval Office with the president having just appointed a minister for mutants. It's Kelsey Grammer painted blue, as it turns out. And then they discover a cure for mutancy. Think of the dilemma that minister is put in, at the heart of the establishment and the heart of the capitalist world. We've got to peddle the lie that we're all the same so we all buy the same products. That's why they don't like openly gay people on TV. We upset the view that we're all the same. What is Magneto going to say about that? Well, what everybody should say. Not on your life! There are people who think you can cure homosexuality. Scientologists will tell you they can cure you. They can CURE you! Well, Magneto suddenly became an easy part to play.