Ian McKellen and Andy in “Episode 5”

How do I act so well? ... What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

Yeah.

You're confused. It's perfectly simple.

No.

Case in point, Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes from New Zealand, says to me, "Sir Ian, I want you to be Gandalf the wizard." And I say to him, "You are aware that I am not really a wizard..." And he said, "Yes, I’m aware of that. What I want you to do is to use your acting skills to portray the wizard for the duration of the film." So I said, "Okay." And then I said to myself, "Hmm, how would I do that?" And this is what I did: I imagined what it would be like to be a wizard, and then I pretended and acted in that way on the day... And how did I know what to say? [conspiratorially] The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me. If we were to draw a graph of my process, of my method, it would be something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian. Action. WIZARD! "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" Cut! Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.