Ian McKellen: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked
3. Sir Leigh Teabing - The Da Vinci Code (2006)
You can similarly lay the blame at the door of the source material when it comes to his third worse performance, being yet again suckered (although this time it'll almost certainly be due to the pay cheque) into a bit part in this thoroughly pedestrian adaptation of Dan Brown's thoroughly pedestrian and inexplicably popular pulpy thriller about a conspiracy to do with the Catholic church and Jesus having gotten his end away before the crucifixion, or something. Who's really paying attention? Apparently nobody involved, or else they wouldn't have let Tom Hanks step on set with that wig that even Nicolas Cage at his most Nouveau Shamanic wouldn't be caught dead in. McKellen still turned up for a part that bore the name of Sir Leigh Teabing, which sounds like the name of a Stereotypical Upper-Class Brit from a bad improv comedy show, and only gets worse from there. Teabing, it turns out, is a noted British Grail historian, who informs Hanks and sidekick Audrey Tatou the actual Holy Grail is explicitly encoded in Leonardo da Vinci's the Last Supper. Those are words that Sir Ian McKellen actually has to say in this film. If one of the best actors currently working today, who's been doing his job for five decades, can't sell it? Nobody can.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
