this is bbc world news, the headlines — international condemnation of what appears to be the systematic killing of ukrainian civilians by retreating russian forces. with vote counting underway in hungary's elections, prime minister viktor orban appears to be comfortably ahead. pakistan's parliament is dissolved after prime minister imran khan survives a move to oust him ahead of new elections. at least six people have been killed and 12 are in hospital following a mass shooting in california's state capital, sacramento. now on bbc news, amol rajan speaks to actor ian mckellen, one of the most celebrated performers of his generation and someone who has long defied convention and expectation.

just over four years ago i drove to chichester to interview a titan of stage and screen. he was staring as king lear in the local theatre and he told me it would be his last big shakespearean role. i should not have believed a word, because last year, at the age of 82, amidst the pandemic and some five decades after his first public turn in the role, sir ian mckellen played hamlet. it was typical of him, surprising, mischievous, your thespian charisma. above all, it showed that in his ninth decade, he seems indefatigable. undoubtedly one of the greats this country has produced, he is a pioneer, a game—changer, who rewrote the rules of acting and helped britain confront the truth about itself.

known to a global audience for his portrayal of gandalf in the lord of the rings, it has been quite a journey for a boy from burnley born before the war. over six decades he has been called the area to laurence olivier, starred in hundreds of productions and eliminated screens small and large. how good do you think you are? whenever i start rehearsing a play, i tell myself the fact that i'm the best actor in the world to play that part. along the way, his championing of gay rights has earned him the ire of many and the respect of many more. our conversation cover everything from his life story the weather, for instance, non—jewish actors should playjewish roles

and the story behind the first same—sex kiss on the bbc. he has invited me to explore, if not explain, a life that charts the story of post—war britain. i have a simple quest, to find out who really is ian mckellen? camera a, b, c, d. ok, let's do it. sir ian... don't call me sir! why not? i thought you were rather proud of united. proud, yes, of course, but i do not want to be separated out from other people, i don't really like titles. there we are. thank you for talking to me. otherwise i will have to call you mr. that would be very weird and it would also highlight the hierarchy. do you remember what it was like as an eight or nine—year—old falling in love with the theatre? you got amazing access, partly via your family,

to the backstage and there is this contrast between the sheen and glory of what you saw on stage and dare i say it, sexy, illicit, not quite cd, but the underworld element of what was happening backstage and you fell in love with that, didn't you? i was most intrigued, not by what i saw, but to wonder how it had been achieved. how do they do that? how did that curtain go up? how did that light go through that curtain, so we could see beyond? how much do they get paid? do they know each other well? i wanted to know what it was like! well, as an amateur actor, i could discover that. acting at school, primary school, and secondary school, i could find out what happened, how you put on a play. my fate was sealed then, ijust wanted to live in this world.

so, the production and how it got made had a magic and the sense of it as a profession, something you could earn a living with and learn from all these other people and be embedded in a community? these people, when you saw them from the front, from the audience, were very special. lam honoured, lancaster. i brought heather henry hereford, my son. they looked special, they wore make—up, the men! they painted their faces! the lights were so bright. this was intriguing! they were not like us and they were visitors to the town and where did they go to? so, istarted reading the stage newspaper and then i began to understand, there are all these theatres, all over the place! i think if you had to define what these little towns were like, in the north and elsewhere around the country, theatre would have to be a part of it. not just professional theatre, there was the bolton theatre, school, of course, it was all available. and although to be an actor

was an odd thing, my family would think to do, as a profession, my mother told her sister before she died, too young, that if ian became an actor, she would be happy because actors brought such joy to the lives of people. and i have held onto that. but you found a sense of belonging and freedom to be yourself as an undergraduate at cambridge and you are part of this extraordinary generation who have gone on to great things in the theatre and on screen. although there is no drama faculty at cambridge, i spent most of my time acting

and we had our own amateur theatre. wasn't i lucky, itjust seems a natural progression, what had begun as a hobby, the fun of going to the theatre, by the time i was 20 and ready to earn a living, my hobby became my profession and then my life. before you could act professionally, in 1961, when i was starting out, you had to become a member of the union, equity and their role was that you could only become a provisional member until you had completed 44 weeks of work as an actor. it was a real trade, wasn't it? it was and are you taking this seriously, young person? all right, 44 weeks was how you got on and until you are a full member, you could not work on television, in film or in london. that meant going out of london and working in the regional theatre, which is what i did and what derek did anjudi dench did... it is what we all did and expected to do and wanted to do because we knew, whether we had been to drama school

or not, i did not go, that is where you would learn your trade, that is where you are discovering your strengths and weaknesses. i just learned how to act. you did these hard yards of theatre for decades really before you had this transformative moment in tv and film, but is one of the real reason is that you spent so long in theatre, rather than going for it on tv and film, that your first adventures in tv and film were tricky? do you remember your first ever tv performance, if i told you it was 1964 and you're halfway up a tree, could you remember where you were? i think i was in the bbc television centre and pretending to be in india, i think. there was the tiger! i walked up to it, took a single shot, fired and that was that. how big was it? oh, i would say, 11 feet.

11 feet. did these for a schema to the television was the future? television? i had no idea. in those days that you would be recorded by four cameras, all on the move, and the actor, if he was wise, knew which camera was on him, so that he could respond to it. you were i think pushing the boundaries of what people thought you could do in britain, through your work in the theatre. your case on stage in edward the second, the marlow play, the bbc put that on television and that was the first gay kiss. kind words and mutual talk makes grief better. therefore the dumb embracement, let us part. that was quite a remarkable moment of cultural transgression. did you think of it at the time?

i look back at that time and i think, goodness me, it was 1967 that homosexuality was decriminalised, that was a remarkable moment! yes, we had a passionate kiss, james and myself, for which i am always grateful! and it was broadcast by the bbc. the bbc was not out to shock or educate them, it was just doing a play that had had success at the edinburgh festival and two seasons in london and christopher marlowe wrote that play, he was born the same year as shakespeare. it was not a new playwright, but it was the first play ever with a gay hero, nevertheless there was and i do not remember anyone complaining. of course since i have heard from people saying, i am so grateful to you for that case which i was watching in indiana with my parents and we had a good conversation about it afterwards and i am a happily married gay man.

that was wonderful. i did not do that play because i was on a mission to tell people about homosexuality and certainly not about my own, because i was closeted, i was not honest about myself. you were 20 years from coming out publicly, you had actually suffered the consequences professionally of being gay, because i think in 1979 you were due to star in an adaptation of howard pinter�*s the betrayal and the producer, i think he said to you, when would you come over to america with your wife and i went to meet sam speckle and howard had to leave and i was left with his producer. we have nothing in common, we were talking and i referred to an upcoming visit to america and he said, about taking

the family and my wife and i said i am not married, i am gay. i think sam speckle may be the first person i came out to. when i was shown the door. literally? shown the door. leave. and of course i was not in the film. now, the interesting thing to me now is not that it happens, but where was harold pinter? harold pinter, a great humanitarian... nobel prizewinner... fiercely honest... open in his political views, went along with this judgment that i was inappropriate because i was gay, although he must�*ve known.

and it was 30 years later, i think, shortly before harold died that i was in a restaurant london and he came by, slightly tottery and i stood up to greet him and he leaned into my ear and said, i am sorry about the betrayal. was it a premeditated decision when you went on a radio three show, i think it was, the third ear, and it was a publisher associated with the sunday telegraph and used to words, like myself, in reference to homosexuality, was it a premeditated decision that that would be the moment? i don't know. it probably was, it probably was. i think that the moment at which you use those two words, like myself, was a very significant moment in post—war british history, because i think it gave a lot of people confidence. injanuary, 1988 while taking part

in a debate about the controversial section 28 bill which inhibited schools and local authorities from promoting homosexuality, mckellen finally went public in his own characteristically nuanced way. so, you would like to see clause 28 disappear. - i certainly would, it is offensive to anyone who is, like myself, homosexual, apart from the whole business about what can or cannot be taught to children. i properly thought, this would be a good debating point and it was and i seem to remember that he shut up, really! oh dear, oh dear. we were both knighted on the same telly! we stood next to each other. do you feel that the bbc has been an important part of your life? i can remember seeing my first television, the vote race, in a shop window. so, it was radioed that i listen to as a child. which we as a family listen to, we sat down to listen to particular programmes.

i first met anton chekhov and henrik ibsen and bernard shaw, not in the theatre, but saturday night theatre, the saturday night play, every week. whatever people think about the policies and activities of this country, the bbc is the calling card. i want to go back to the acting, why is it that you often play secondary roles, back in 1974, when you are already talked about as being the answer to laurence olivier,

you starred in king lear, but as edgar import tom and a tiny role in others, like iris murdoch plays, what is this interesting paradox that your upfront and at the back. if you're in the company of actors doing a different player every month or so, you do not want to play the main part every time and sometimes the leading part is not appropriate for you to play, it is for someone else. that is built into how i think companies work and if everyone can be the same... i want to ask about the x—men, there is this fascinating thing about magneto, the character you play in x—men alongside professor x played by patrick stewart... state where you are and put your hands over your head right now. they have a different approach to civil rights movements. one of them is magneto who says we have to be aggressive and push

the boundaries and be prepared to take people on, a bit like malcolm x and the other is professor x, much more, perhaps, let us assimilate and work with people and come together. when you came out as gay, when you are knighted, there was a push back against you by the likes of derekjarman who said you had sold out byjoining the establishment. as you reflect on it now, if you feel you have decided, which is a better way to approach this, is it magneto or professor x and which are you? i am on the side of professor x, they were deliberately designed to make people consider the two points of view when it came to changing society. yes, well, my dad was a pacifist. i am not going out with a gun or a stick or a stone. there was violence against gay people, who had been killed and still are in dreadful occasions, being killed for what they are.

but that did not come from us. stonewall was set up, co—founded by you to fight prejudice and bigotry and the day gay marriage is legal in this country, do you feel that the majority of what you set out to do you have done, which is a remarkable thing? it seems totally successful. i am not the only one who thinks that the laws in this country are superior to anywhere else in the world, there is nothing now in the law that needs hold back a young, gay man or woman. if they said come back as gandalf, would you do it if i was on dead or the bbc? i have been waiting for the call and it has not come. there are going to be news stories from tolkien, but i gather gandalf will not be a part of them. that is a shame.

if he is the micro are you available? if there is one part that you cannot be too old for! i think you 7000 years old! that was 20 years ago, you know. what i want to do now, professionally, is treat everyjob as if it is the last that i will ever do. you told me when i interviewed you for keenly that you would never play shakespeare again! i wrote it on the bbc news website and i think it is still there, rather embarrassingly and you played hamlet. let me ask you one last philosophical question, helen mirren playing golda mayor, there has been this interesting discussion about whether a jewish actor should play a jewish icon, you played magneto, he isjewish and you are not ofjewish heritage, what do you think of that idea that

you should havejewish people playing jewish characters or indeed whether you need gay people to play gay characters? there are two things, isn't it? is the argument that a gentile cannot play a jew and is the argument therefore that a jew cannot play gentile? is there an argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part and if so, does that mean i cannot play straight parts and i am not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in macbeth? we are acting, we are pretending. are we capable of understanding what it is to bejewish? are we going to convince a jewish audience that we arejewish? well, perhaps we do not need to, because we are just acting.

let me ask you some quickfire question, what technology is indispensable? the gas stove. what social media platform do you favour? i do not know what that means. favourite sports person? rough. dickens or shakespeare? what do you mean? if you had to choose? choose the literature of one over the other, who would you prefer? that is not a sensible question. i agree. most people give bad answers. tolkien, with gratitude. how much tea and coffee to drink? i have not drunk t ever in my life really, coffee i stopped drinking 13 months ago, along with alcohol. do you eat meat? no, apart from bacon, pork pies and sausages. on occasion.

would you like to go into space because micro no, i have been into space in my imagination. when did you last cry? probably when i was rehearsing or in a performance. i can get myself into it, i could do it now. it would not be a big feature of my ordinary life. for almost 70 years, ian mckellen has delivered era defining performances across the globe and it strikes me he is far from finished, but as he looks back on his game changing life and times, i have one last thing to ask him. final question. what advice would you give to that young boy in the north west of england fascinated by theatre and wondering where he fits in the world? make sure you enjoy yourself

and that does not mean you do not have to work hard or do things you do not like in order to get better, but find your enjoyment in working hard and make sure before you go on stage that you do up your flies. ian mckellen, sir ian mckellen, i am not to say sir, thank you so much for your time. thank you so much. i really appreciate it. hello there.

an extremely cold start to an april morning but monday morning bringing a different feel, much milder but rather damp, outbreaks of rain and a brisk breeze as well and the changes courtesy of this weather front and you can tell from the red semicircles it's a warm front and as the name suggests it's bringing warmer or milder air and this wedge of milder dominating the weather for all of us during monday so outbreaks of rain towards the south, tending to clear away and something driver developing for england and wales on the odd spot of drizzle and rain pushing back into parts of northern ireland and north—west scotland as the day wears on. eastern scotland might see some sunshine and 11 to 15 degrees for most and colder across the northern isles and as we move from monday to tuesday we see another weather front and it's a cold front as you can tell from the blue triangles and it pushes south to introduce colder air at the cold air not making a lot of progress at

this stage and most of us holding onto milder conditions and a bit of brightness to the south and rain for northern ireland and southern scotland and northern england but on the northern edge as it runs into the northern edge as it runs into the cold air, that is where we could see some snow and over higher ground and the grampians we could be looking at between ten or 20 centimetres of snow as we move into the night, withjust four or 5 the night, with just four or 5 degrees the night, withjust four or 5 degrees through tuesday afternoon northern scotland but southwards, we are still in double digits in the mild air. tuesday into wednesday brings the air of low pressure eastwards and it deepens as it goes so bringing some increasingly brisk winds and sunshine in blustery showers is the story for many on wednesday and still snow across high ground in northern scotland and those are the average wind speeds on the gas will be stronger than that, in excess of a0 mph for some and a range of temperatures north to south. five full stone away but 1a in london. through wednesday night

the pressure drifts deep woods and it could bring gales and further snow in scotland and another weather system down towards the south and another bit of cold air making further progress by this stage but uncertainty about how it will spill south, and the weather system in the south, and the weather system in the south bringing outbreaks of rain and in the north a mix of sunny spells and wintry showers and temperatures between six and 12 degrees but we have to watch the frontal system in the south because if, and it is a big if, and there is uncertainty but if it drifts back into the cold air that could generate some snow in wales, the midlands, to the north of the sunshine and wintry showers and a split in temperatures to the south of the weather system, still mild to the north but feel chilly. moving to the north but feel chilly. moving to the start the week and this rain and potentially snow in the south will clear away but on saturday will bring bright conditions but still with some wintry showers. all of us

finding ourselves back in the cold air to start the weekend but then it looks like there will be another change on this well, an area of low pressure bringing milder air as we head into next week but there will be outbreaks of rain and brisk winds and still a bit of uncertainty about this as well because of the cold air clings on in the north there could possibly be some further snow. plenty of changes ahead.

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prime minister viktor orban appears to be comfortably ahead.