Ian McKellen: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Magneto - X-Men (2000-2014)

The next time Singer and McKellen would work together was significantly different for a number of reasons. For one thing the actor was playing a former prisoner of the Nazi camps, rather than an officer working in one. For another, he was appearing as a supervillain in a comic book adaptation rather than convincing as a real-life monster who very much existed and did terrible things in the real world. Magneto's pretty dastardly, but he's not real. Still, the current boom of comic book adaptations probably wouldn't have existed with that first X-Men film, and that first X-Men film wouldn't have been quite such a success if it didn't have Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen at the forefront. Bringing a quiet dignity (and occasional righteous fury) to what could easily have been a scenery-chewing part, McKellen makes a guy who dresses in purple and controls metal into a three-dimensional, sympathetic figure. Things went a little off-track with the third X-Men film, but he can hardly be held responsible for that train wreck €“ that's all on you, Ratner €“ and his appearance in Days Of Future Past was fleeting, but McKellen's time as Magneto was assured a place amongst his best performances solely on the basis of those intense games of chess (both literal and figurative, eh guys, symbolism eh) against Stewart's Charles Xavier. Now that's acting.