Esteemed British actor Sir Ian McKellen has opened up about being offered the part of wizard and Hogwarts principal Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise - and why he turned it down.
McKellen famously played the role of Gandalf in Sir Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies - but said he couldn't take up the part of the other prominent wizard because the man who had played him hadn't liked him.
McKellen spoke about turning down the part on BBC's HARDtalk, with host Stephen Sackur.
Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, died in 2002 and had shortly before expressed his disapproval of McKellen.
Harris had referred to McKellen and fellow English actors Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi as "technically brilliant, but passionless", according to Sackur - a claim McKellen dismissed as "nonsense".
"When he died - he played Dumbledore, the wizard - I played the real wizard [Gandalf] of course," he said, in reference to his role as Gandalf.
"But when they called me up and said would I be interested in being in the Harry Potter films, they didn't say what part.
"I worked out what they were thinking and I couldn't. I couldn't take over the part from an actor who I'd known hadn't approved of me."
When asked if he could have played the role, McKellen stays coy but says, "when I see the posters of Michael Gambon - who gloriously plays Dumbledore - I think sometimes that it's me".
Newshub.
