Ian McKellen talks new movie, bad reviews and realizing ‘you’re not immortal’

(USA Today) – No one is immune to bad reviews.

Take it from Sir Ian McKellen, who bared all in a 1974 production of “King Lear” in Brooklyn. John Simon, a critic for New York magazine, was largely unimpressed.

“When I took my clothes off, he gave my penis a review,” McKellen says with a grin over Zoom. “He complimented the penis, but didn’t think my acting was all that remarkable.”

A half-century later, the British stage and screen legend is turning the tables with “The Critic” (in theaters Friday), in which he plays an acid-tongued reviewer named Jimmy Erskine. Set in 1930s London, the fictional drama follows the prickly bond between Jimmy and theater actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), a constant target of his catty takedowns. She reluctantly agrees to help him save his job from newspaper executives, who are incensed by his vitriolic scrawls.

McKellen, 85, has always had a healthy relationship with criticism. As a young man, he acted in nearly two dozen undergraduate productions while studying English literature at Cambridge University. He recalls one glowing write-up from the time, which singled him out as “a name to remember.”