British actor Sir Ian McKellen will receive the Donostia Award, an honorary prize for lifetime achievement given by the San Sebastian Film Festival, at a gala to be held on 23rd September in San Sebastian.

Sir Ian McKellen (Burnley, England, 1939) is one of the leading British film, theatre and TV actors. His tremendous versatility has enabled him to play enormously varying parts, from Shakespeare classics to contemporary superheroes, from author cinema to major commercial productions.

In cinema, his prestige was solidified with roles like the extraordinary Richard III (1995), which he made for Richard Loncraine; the part of movie director James Whale in Gods and Monsters (1998), with which he won the Silver Shell for Best Actor at the San Sebastian Festival; or the Nazi in Apt Pupil (1999). Following a long career packed with awards, including two Oscar nominations (for the aforementioned Gods and Monsters and The Lord of the Rings), he achieved huge popularity with two of the fantasy genre’s essential characters, Magneto in Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000), and its sequels, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings saga (2001), a role it seems he will play again in the film adaptation of The Hobbit, being prepared by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

McKellen developed an early love of theatre-going and, intrigued by what went on backstage, began acting at Cambridge University. He started acting professionally with British regional repertory companies in 1961.

By 1969, when he was called “the leading actor of his generation”, he had worked with Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre Company, appearing in modern plays in London and New York, played David Copperfield for BBC Television, and participated in a few films, such as The Promise (Michael Hayes) and Alfred the Great (Clive Donner).

He went on to excel as an actor in classical plays on tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played Richard III, Edward II, Hamlet, Romeo and Dr. Faustus. In 1980, he was Salieri in Amadeus on Broadway. Then came three seasons as actor/producer for the National Theatre in works by Ibsen, Congreve, Stoppard, Chekhov and Shakespeare. And there was the premiere of Bent , by Martin Sherman, which exposed the fates of homosexuals in Nazi labour camps.

McKellen’s intense dedication to the theatre made his film career blossom rather late. After winning awards for his adaptation of Richard III, he was chosen by Hollywood to star in Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil and Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters. After that, he gained worldwide fame with box-office hits like X-Men, The Lord of the Rings and The Da Vinci Code. In 2006, the Berlin Film Festival gave him an honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement.