Back on the set of the famous trilogy adapted from the work of JRR Tolkien, and on the way in which Ian McKellen forged the unforgettable voice of the magician Gandalf.
Serious, deep, powerful and reassuring at the same time, tinged with adventure, mystery and a certain dose of humour, sometimes authoritarian and directive, sometimes soft and comforting, always in the service of truth: the voice of the magician Gandalf , played by Ian McKellen in Peter Jackson’s famous trilogy, is undoubtedly one of the most striking characteristics of this legendary character.
But how did the British actor go about shaping this particular vocal timbre? To succeed in making the texts of JRR Tolkien resonate so convincingly in the mouth of his character?
As he explains in the audio commentary of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the saga, the actor simply decided to go back to basics, and to draw inspiration directly from the author of the Lord of the Rings. As one can see from watching some BBC interviews, Tolkien, at the time he had finished writing his trilogy, was an elderly scholar who often smoked a pipe:
Metropolitan FilmExport
“For the voice of Gandalf, I thought of a man who smoked too much, hence the raspy side of the voice”explains Ian McKellen. “After a certain age, the voice gets tired. For me, he must have had an English accent like Tolkien. All the characters are like Tolkien. He belonged to the middle class who would have spoken like that, in a cultured voice, Oxford. I wanted it to be a bit old fashioned and a bit primed.”
Soaking up his character traits and all his little habits, the actor therefore directly based the character of Gandalf on the author who had been the first to bring him to life:
“When Tolkien read passages from The Lord of the Rings, he actually spoke like that,” McKellen continues. “So I was happy that Gandalf spoke like him. I understood that very quickly. It seemed sensible to me and it went well with the make-up.”
Remember also that in the French version of Lord of the Rings, it is the masterful Jean Piat who hides behind the unforgettable voice of Gandalf. A theater actor most of the time, he is also known for having vocally interpreted two great villains of Disney studios: the cruel Scar in The Lion King and the ruthless Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
(Re)discover all the hidden details of “The Fellowship of the Ring”…
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The Lord of the Rings: 10 Hidden Details in The Fellowship of the Ring
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