Ian McKellen

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He is the recipient of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BIF Award, two Saturn Awards, four Drama Desk Awards and two Critics Choice Awards. He has also received two Academy Award nominations, four BAFTA nominations and five Emmy Award nominations.

McKellen was born onMay 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, the son of Margery Lois and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer. He was their second child, with a sister, Jean, five years his senior. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, his family moved to Wigan. They lived there through the war and his early childhood. They relocated to Bolton in 1951, after his father had been promoted. The experience of living through the war as a young child had a lasting impact on him, and he later claimed that only after peace resumed ... did I realise that war wasnt normal. When an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath ofSeptember attacks, McKellen said Well, darling, you forgetI slept under a steel plate until I was four years old.

Source: Wikipedia