Ian Mckellen

It's only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous.

On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.

I just followed my parents' example and advice on living, which was to leave the world a better place than you found it. They were professional do-gooders, ministers of the church, social workers, teachers, and missionaries, that sort of thing.

I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.

There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay.

What's nice for me, having identified myself for years as being rather shy, is now, wherever I am, in public, there tends to be a friendly face who's pleased to see me, and I like that.

Thanks to every gay person in public and non-public life who has come out.

It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It`s very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California.

There are people who've enjoyed my work in the theater, and they let me know that it was special for them. I'm not going to say, 'Well, you should have seen me as Gandalf!'

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

I think the point to be understood is that we're all different. I've never been a fan of theories of acting. I didn't go to drama school, so I was never put through a training that was limited by someone saying, 'This is the way you should act.'

No actor wants to play to an empty house.

Anyone in public life who comes out, comes out primarily for themselves, and their life is immediately improved. That's what happened to me.

Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?

There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore.

What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?

I don't have Gandalf the White's certainty about everything.

Eventually, before I die, I hope to have written about every part I've played.

One school invited me down, as two pupils had come out, and the headmaster didn't know what to do about it. I said, 'How many students here are gay?' and he said, 'Just these two.' Clearly not. 'How many gay members of staff have you got?' He had no idea. And this was a concerned man.

I learned that coming out was crucial to self-esteem.

There are still times in my life where I pull back from being totally honest, and I can't imagine a single straight person who would understand that.