I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 - 1976) lived and painted.

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.'

The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.

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.

If you've got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed - I've just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.

I think I've become more modest as the years have gone on.

There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I've got better as an actor. I've learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it.

The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.

There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud.

'The Lego Movie?' I've never heard of it.

It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.

I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them.

I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book.

My ambition is to get better as an actor.

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?

You put anyone in the outfit, and they look like Gandalf. Not that clever.

If you get criticized, good - I don't think people get criticized enough. People talk behind your back and they criticize you, but they don't often come up and say it to you.

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

There's no sex in Middle Earth.

There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company. But you also end up in the company of people you don't admire, including some rather dodgy politicians.

I had never come across the 'X-Men' comics till I was asked to play Magneto, so I just jumped into that job.

Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.

If I say often enough that I'm going to be in 'King Kong,' I'm hoping that Peter Jackson will take the hint.

Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.