Sir Ian McKellen stepped onto the stage at Royal Albert Hall earlier this month to introduce a live concert screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That alone would have been worth the trip for most fans. The afternoon, it turned out, covered considerably more ground than a single film.
Royal Albert Hall shared the story on Instagram this week. McKellen, on learning he’d been cast as Gandalf all those years ago, told a friend the news. The friend’s reply was simple and certain: “Your life is about to change.” Six films later, with a seventh currently in production, that prediction reads more like a quiet understatement.
The concert format pairs the original film with Howard Shore’s score performed live by a full orchestra. Hearing those compositions played live in that room is a different experience from watching at home. The familiarity of the music gives the live performance something to push against. McKellen’s appearance on stage beforehand was its own kind of bonus.
The more unusual part of the visit came afterward. McKellen sat with the Royal Albert Hall archivists and worked through a collection of programmes, artefacts, and objects the venue has preserved over the decades. The full visit is available on the Royal Albert Hall YouTube channel.
Among the items he explored: materials from ABBA‘s 1977 tour and the band’s place in what the Royal Albert Hall account described as the Gay Revolution. He also discussed the Stonewall Equality Shows, a concert series connected to the LGBT+ civil rights movement in Britain.
These aren’t peripheral subjects for McKellen. He came out publicly in 1988 during a BBC radio discussion about Section 28. That was the British legislation restricting the promotion of homosexuality. He went on to co-found the lobbying organization Stonewall, the group that took its name from the 1969 New York uprising. For McKellen, ABBA’s role in 1970s culture and the Stonewall shows of later decades are part of a history he has long been invested in.
The archive visit had an unusual texture to it. McKellen arrived as Gandalf’s original voice, a figure from one of cinema’s most beloved fantasy franchises. He spent the afternoon going through records that tell a very different kind of cultural story. Both threads matter. He doesn’t seem to treat them as separate things.
He turned 87 this year. In 2024, he fell from a stage during a West End run of Player Kings. There was real concern about what came next. His Royal Albert Hall appearance this month suggests he’s very much still present.
A new Lord of the Rings film is currently in production. The franchise McKellen helped define is still moving forward. He showed up to introduce the original film, then spent an afternoon in the archive talking about ABBA and queer history. The range of that afternoon says something about McKellen. He doesn’t separate the work from the history. Both are part of how he moves through the world.