Sherlock Holmes ages and grays in the new movie ‘Mr. Holmes’

From Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings to Magneto in X-Men, Ian McKellen knows his way around blockbuster roles. But in his new film, Mr. Holmes, he plays one of the original superheroes — Sherlock Holmes.

But this isn’t the supremely confident Sherlock Holmes for whom the most baffling crimes are merely “elementary.” In Mr. Holmes, McKellen plays a 93-year-old Sherlock retired to the English seaside after World War II. He’s an old man racing time and his diminishing memory to solve a case that has stumped and troubled him for years.

With Benedict Cumberbatch and Lucy Liu reviving the Sherlock Holmes stories on television with Sherlock and Elementary, and Robert Downey Jr. taking the detective to the big screen in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, Conan Doyle’s detective has seen a recent resurgence in popularity. But McKellen doesn’t worry about too much about competition. “Our version, nobody else has ever done,” McKellen says. “I thought it would be fun to add to the mix.”

The director of Mr. Holmes is Bill Condon, who recently finished shooting a live action version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in which McKellen plays Cogsworth the clock. Condon also wrote and directed Gods and Monsters (1998), for which McKellen received his first Academy Award nomination. “He became a great friend after Gods and Monsters,” McKellen says. “If a script arrives and it’s from Bill, you hardly have to read it.”

McKellen was in his 60s before he became the huge movie star he is today, thanks to being cast in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings franchise. “I’m very, very, very, very, very lucky,” he admits. “I have no illusions, anybody of my age and nationality could have played Gandalf.” Other well-known British actors like Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins turned down the role. “I think they didn’t want to go to New Zealand,” McKellen quips. “It was too far away.”

Now an outspoken champion for gay rights, McKellen didn’t come out publicly until he was 49. “The film industry welcomed me with open arms,” McKellen says, noting that his offers for film roles only increased after coming out. It was “absolutely reverse of what’s meant to happen: Everything’s meant to close down and you’re meant to be put back into a closet of society’s devising.”

Kurt Andersen's full interview with Ian McKellen:

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen.