Patrick Stewart’s Dry Wit Shines in a Candid Interview With Ian McKellen

Patrick Stewart’s comic timing has always had room for a well-placed blunt answer. In a shared questionnaire with Ian McKellen, that quality appears in miniature: Stewart turns questions about his beginnings, his habits and his career into punchlines, while McKellen supplies the detail and gentle teasing that keep the exchange moving. The conversation offers a lively portrait of two actors whose public roles carry considerable weight, and whose offstage voices are far less solemn.

The interview is revisited in remembrance of Stewart, described in the source as having died at 86. A Shakespearean actor known to many viewers as Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X, he brings the same clean sense of timing to a series of short answers. McKellen, his longtime fellow performer, is an ideal foil: he answers earnestly, then makes space for Stewart’s mischief.

Two approaches to the same questions

The difference is clear from the first prompt. Asked what they ate for breakfast, Stewart says he made a protein smoothie and took it alongside “a bucketful of supplements.” McKellen offers a more elaborate menu: homemade muesli soaked in fresh-squeezed orange juice, poached apples and blueberries, plus a magnesium pill. The answers establish the rhythm of the interview. McKellen gives the question its full answer; Stewart finds the comic edge.

That pattern sharpens when the subject turns to dreams. Stewart says he rarely dreams, then describes a recent sexual dream with homoerotic overtones as an unusual event. McKellen’s quick response — “That’s a bit personal” — reads like the reaction of a friend who knows when a story has taken a turn. Their exchange stays funny because neither tries to make the joke bigger than it is.

They are similarly different about keeping records. Stewart says he doesn’t keep a diary, though he sometimes writes memorandums of 2,000 or 3,000 words. McKellen recalls writing a diary as a teenager and securing it with a padlock, until he realized his father had found the key. The detail gives his answer a small narrative of its own, while Stewart’s answer sounds like a compact character sketch: private, but not short on words when he has something to set down.

Career stories, without the grand pose

Asked how they were discovered, McKellen credits Harold Hobson, the U.K. Sunday Times drama critic, for championing his performance as Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. Stewart’s response is less polished and more memorable: “Appearing from my mother’s vagina.” It’s a brisk refusal to dress up the fact of his arrival as a theatrical origin story.

Their first jobs offer another contrast. McKellen began as a member of the acting company at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Stewart, at 15, worked as a junior reporter for his local weekly newspaper. He jokes that he could have become Rupert Murdoch if he had stayed, then adds that the job lasted a year. The punchline makes the early detour sound like an escape route that worked out well for everyone involved.

Stewart is more openly appreciative when asked about a kind employer. He remembers Jeffrey Katzenberg bringing breakfast to the sound booth while Stewart recorded The Prince of Egypt (1998), then calling after the workday to thank him and say well done. Stewart’s verdict, “A Prince of Cinema,” turns a specific act of consideration into a neat title. McKellen names Judi Dench, recalling her habit of giving surprise presents with handwritten cards. In both answers, professional kindness shows up in tangible gestures rather than sweeping praise.

Fame, food and life in New York

On fan mail, Stewart declines to describe the strangest item he has received, explaining that he doesn’t want to encourage anyone to send another. McKellen’s answer is a knitted Gandalf doll. Their responses hint at two sides of being widely recognized: fans can be affectionate and inventive, while the attention can sometimes become unsettling. Stewart says he has encountered several fans who frightened him, adding that they have little sense of the cost their behavior can impose. McKellen jokes that his roles as Gandalf and Magneto may help keep people at a distance: a 7,000-year-old wizard and the Master of Magnetism are not easy figures to approach casually.

The food questions return with McKellen’s account of cooking his stepmother’s scrambled eggs. He combines eggs, butter, milk and seasoning in a saucepan, then stirs the mixture over low heat until it reaches his preferred consistency. He eats the dish each night while performing in No Man’s Land, where his character has breakfast at the top of Act 2. Stewart keeps his answer to the point: “I don’t cook … But I bake!” That small distinction lands as another glimpse of his humor, and a reminder that even a familiar questionnaire can prompt a fresh detail.

Asked what they regret not doing, McKellen says he wishes he had come out earlier than he did, at 49. Stewart’s answer is parachuting out of a plane, something his father did several times during wartime action. The answers are personal in very different ways: one reflects on when to share an important part of oneself, the other on a daring experience he never tried.

New York closes the conversation on a warm note. McKellen praises Broadway audiences for welcoming live drama and showing their enthusiasm; Stewart picks the city’s residents as his favorite part. That’s a fitting final exchange for an interview built on the pleasure of two distinct voices meeting. McKellen brings stories and generosity; Stewart gives each pause a chance to become a joke. Together, they make the case for an enduring kind of star appeal: serious craft, easy rapport and the confidence to be funny at their own expense.

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