“Sorry I Can’t Hear You, The Sound Of My Lord Of The Rings Money Is Too Loud”

Way back in October, Damian Lewis (the ginger from Homeland) gave an interview with The Guardian wherein he got his palm tree on and threw some shade at Ian McKellen by saying he used to worry his career would go the way of Gandalf. In case you don’t remember, it went a little something like this:

“The idea that I would be one of these slightly over-the-top, fruity actors who would have an illustrious career on stage, but wouldn’t start getting any kind of film work until I was 50 and then start playing wizards.”

According to The Guardian, Ian McKellen finally got around to responding to Damian’s comments in a recent interview, and guess what? Magneto is too busy being a hot old piece and having fun hang-outs with Patrick Stewart to give two hobbits about what the ginger from Homeland thinks of his career:

McKellen was forthright in his response but, like Lewis, declined to name names. “I wouldn’t like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue and was stuck doing scripts that I didn’t particularly like just to keep the income up,” he told the Radio Times.

“I’ve always wanted to get better as an actor. And I have got better. You’ve only got to see my early work to see that.”

McKellen, who described Lewis’s remarks as “fair comment”, said: “No one needs to feel sorry for me or Michael Gambon [who played Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies] or anyone else who has fallen victim to success.”

You need a bag of frozen peas for that burn?

I love how Sir Ian took 2 months to basically say “Take a seat, young one”. Isn’t it great when some new-to-it actor wins an award, then acts like they wrote the book on ACTING? We’ll see what Damian has to say in 15 years when he’s begging his agent to get him an audition for The Hobbit, Part 9 (“Hahahaha…No” – Ian McKellen, 2028). And while Ian’s reply was an advance-study in catty, but it would have been perfection if he’d put on the glasses and read a bitch instead.