Sir Ian McKellen: The Bard's ambassador

Sir Ian McKellen is a bundle of energy. Having sat through 10 media interactions in a span of 120 minutes, the 77-year-old snatches a couple of minutes for a smoke break, as he scampers between rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

He is a man on a mission. During his six-day visit to Mumbai this past week – his first to India – to promote the British Film Institute-curated Shakespeare on Film event, McKellen has a packed calendar: an hour-long Twitter chat, media interactions, a public tête-à-tête with Aamir Khan, a film screening, a film festival inauguration and soirées with the upper crust before he jets off to Shanghai, China where he will likely have an equally action-packed schedule.

McKellen, widely known for his portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series and as Magneto in the X-Men franchise, is old school. He doesn't indulge distractions, demanding absolute silence for the few minutes he has to engage with every journalist queued at the hotel's business centre. Sporting a green kurta and a scarf that masks a bead chain, his gaze is fixed as he listens intently to the queries, at times closing his eyes, perhaps in concentration, before replying. His responses, punctuated by a deep, fruity voice, generous gesticulations and unblinking expressions, amplify his words – evidence of McKellen's roots in theatre.

On his tryst with the Bard

McKellen first encountered Shakespeare's works when his elder sister took the then-eight-year-old for a production of Twelfth Night. "Shakespeare was part of my theatre going... He wasn't an examination subject. I wasn't frightened of him," says the actor.

He feels that reading is the worst manner of discovering Shakespeare. "I don't think he belongs to the classroom, because most teachers are not qualified to excite their students about his work. Shakespeare made no attempt to preserve his scripts... he didn't want them to be read. He wanted them to be seen, heard, experienced," enthuses McKellen. "The best way to discover Shakespeare is to discover him in the medium for which he wrote – which is theatre."

On Shakespeare's appeal

"There's nothing that Shakespeare didn't understand about human nature," says McKellen. "He writes about stupid people, wise people, rich people, poor people, powerful people, untouchables... he understood everybody. And human nature hasn't changed in 400 years, so the accuracy with which Shakespeare identified people and explains it to us makes it fascinating."

On lessons from his plays

"What I've learnt through Shakespeare is that human beings are capable of anything! There's no pointing your finger to (Othello's advisor) Iago and saying: 'Evil, evil, evil,' or 'Ill, ill, ill,' or 'Mistaken, mistaken, mistaken,' or 'Abused, abused, abused,' or 'Cruel, cruel, cruel'."

"You can't say 'Hitler, evil!' and have the end of the problem. No! No! Hitler was a real man. With parents. And relationships... or lack of them. Hitler was a vegetarian (gestures thumbs up)! He loved dogs (gestures thumbs up)! He was a man of principle (gestures thumbs up)! Solve the problem of Hitler, and you solve the problem of a lot of other things as well, and so it is with Shakespeare. Shakespeare takes people from dreadful, dreadful things and makes you understand them. In doing that, he makes you go, 'My god, I could do that. I could commit murder. I know what's it like to be that jealous. I know what it's like to be a savage.' I often feel that when you are in a Shakespeare play, it's like going to a shrink... it's like seeing your dark side."

On adapting Shakespeare to the big screen

"The biggest challenge is what you do with the language," says McKellen, who co-wrote the screenplay for the 1995 film Richard III with director Richard Loncraine, based on the Bard's play, and won the BAFTA award for adapted screenplay. He notes that Shakespeare employed shorthand, writing "something very concise but very precise. Because I've played Richard III many times in theatre, it was difficult to imagine what words you did not need in cinema. Of course, in cinema, a picture can accomplish as much (as words would on stage), plus it would be rather crude in comparison to the words (on stage) because the words can be very precise and subtle."

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Shakespeare on Film is a mammoth undertaking by the British Council and the British Film Institute (BFI) to take 18 films based on Shakespeare's works to 110 countries. The event is part of a larger, ambitious 'Shakespeare Lives in 2016' programme by the British Council and GREAT Britain Campaign to mark the 400th death anniversary of the Bard.

Ten of the 18 movies curated by the BFI will be screened across nine cities in India, including in Mumbai this year. Details (date/time/venue) of movie screenings will be available on the British Council's website www.britishcouncil.in and www.shakespearelives.org, and also on Twitter @inBritish and the British Council India's Facebook page.

All Night Long by Basil Dearden
Hamlet by Kenneth Branagh
King Lear by Peter Brook
Macbeth by Roman Polanski
Much Ado About Nothing by Kenneth Branagh
Othello by Oliver Parker
Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirrelli
Richard III by Richard Loncraine
The Tempest by Derek Jarman
Play On! Shakespeare on Silent Film (Various clips of early Shakespeare adaptations)