Sir Ian McKellen

Working mainly as I do in the theatre, of course, you have many chances to improve.

And sometimes you might play a part, a big part, like King Lear, a hundred times.

And being me, I am better on the 100th performance than I was on the first night.

Well, there are some parts that you feel, even after you've closed in the long run, that there was still more work to be done.

I felt that very much when I fell off the stage as a full staff in Player King's Rob Icke's version of Henry IV.

by Shakespeare that I was robbed of the last month of the run when I could have perhaps nailed Falstaff.

You want to go back?

I do and I don't.

Hamlet, which I played when I was 29, a good age to play Hamlet, I felt was unfinished business.

And I came around to do it again when I was 82 on film and on stage.

And I think King Leo, though I've done it twice, I may return to.

I think that may be my next job in the theater, trying to see what I didn't quite mind.

These parts, you know, I'm talking about Shakespeare, Chekhov, they are, you'll never get to the bottom of them.

So if you go back thinking you've already played it well, you'll find new stuff to do.

I used to run the quiz, the Monday night quiz here.

And I took a day each week to think up the questions.

And I was behind the bar and I loved doing it.

But my partners in the...

who had the license to the poem, but sacked me.

They didn't think my performance was good enough.