“I had no idea what it was about”: the only time Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen fought over a role
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)
Sat 14 March 2026 14:30, UK
The image of staff-wielding Lord of the Rings legend Gandalf the White scrapping with person-munching monster Hannibal Lecter, one in flowing robes and wispy beard, the other in a prison jumpsuit and face mask, is not one that I’ve had in my mind before, but now it’s one that I wish had happened in real life.
Because, back in the late 1990s, it could well have done, as Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen ended up going for the same role.
Back then, McKellen hadn’t yet made the first Lord of the Rings film, but was about to enjoy worldwide fame thanks to his work as Magneto on Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies in 2000. Hopkins, on the other hand, had been catapulted to superstardom by 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, winning a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for his work as Lecter, and had a huge decade afterwards, picking up another two Academy Award nominations for Remains of the Day and Nixon.
The movie on which they were unwitting rivals was Mission Impossible 2, starring Tom Cruise, the spy sequel directed by John Woo that also featured Thandiwe Newton and Dougray Scott as the film’s main bad guy. Film writer Nick de Semlyen spoke to McKellen and Hopkins about the casting process several years later, reminding them they were both in consideration for Cruise’s boss, a character named Swanbeck.
Hopkins, who would go on to take the small, uncredited cameo part, replied, “I didn’t know that!” while McKellen added, “I was offered it. But they’d only show me the scenes I was in. On those grounds alone, I turned it down. Had I done it, it would have meant I couldn’t do X-Men or The Lord of the Rings”.
Considered by many to be the weakest instalment of the now eight-strong Mission Impossible films, MI:2 was a monster hit at the box office despite middling reviews, bringing in more than half a billion dollars in revenue against a production spend of $125million.
Hopkins was adamant that McKellen made the right decision to skip the movie, however, adding, “That was a good move on lan’s part. I was only on Mission: Impossible for a few days. I remember we had to do a lot of retakes because things were out of focus. So I stayed in Australia for five more days and got a bit more cash. Tom [Cruise] was nice to work with, but I had no idea what it was about. Still don’t.”
McKellen added simply, “Never saw it”, and indeed his decision to concentrate not just on three X-Men movies until 2006, but also to work on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, proved to be a masterstroke, with both franchises bringing in billions of dollars. He would reprise his role as Gandalf in the Hobbit trilogy ten years later, and soon he’ll be back as Magneto as he prepares to appear alongside James McAvoy’s Professor X in Avengers: Doomsday.
Due to hit cinemas in December this year, the Russo brothers-directed Marvel movie is on track to be the most expensive film in cinema history, uniting several superhero franchises and characters in one go, including X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America.
