Parmesh Shahani recounts the four days that he spent with the Shakespearean actor and Hollywood superstar.
“Did he touch you? Do you have Magneto’s superpowers now?” My friend’s nine-year-old daughter (actually, she’s my friend separately too!) asked breathlessly when she realised I had hung out with Sir Ian McKellen in Mumbai. Who knows? The encounter was energising in ways that I am still only beginning to fathom.
Even though I’m 40 years old, I am as thrilled by the rush of new friendships as my nine-year-old buddy. Maybe making connections becomes more random as one grows older, and so rare, which is why they become even more precious! In this case, what began as a fun conversation, at Nita Ambani’s welcome party for Ian at Antilla, morphed into a meeting of minds over the course of four days, in the midst of all the other engagements that he was a part of on his rushed Mumbai trip.
The common ground between us both was lGBT rights. Ian is, of course, one of the world’s most lauded Shakespeare actors and a major Hollywood movie star. He was in India courtesy the British Council and the British Film Institute to mark Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary. However, to me (and I think that he would agree), his most important role over the past few years has been that of a global lGBT rights champion. He regularly makes the top 10 on the World Pride Power list and his outspokenness has made him as much of an lGBT icon as his blockbuster roles in the Lord of the Rings or X-Men franchises.
We spoke extensively about this activist profile in a video we recorded just before he stepped out to inaugurate Kashish, India’s biggest lGBT film festival, at liberty Cinema in Mumbai. What was originally going to be a 15-minute video landed up being almost a one-hour extended conversation! (Check it out when you can on http://indiaculturelab.org/ videos/library/other/sir-ian-mckellen-inconversation-with-parmesh-shahani/)
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