Ian McKellen says the Queen was 'quite rude' to him: 'Does anyone still actually go to the theater?'

The Queen is dead, so Ian McKellen no longer has to bite his tongue.

The Lord of the Rings star recently shared his very candid feelings about Queen Elizabeth II. "The Queen, I'm sure she was quite mad at the end," McKellen said in a new interview with U.K. paper The Times. "And on the few occasions I met her she was quite rude."

The actor recalled a bizarre interaction he had with the late English monarch when she made him a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for his service to drama and equality in 2008.

"She said, 'You've been doing this for an awfully long time,'" he recalled. "I said, 'Well, not as long as you.' I got a royal smile for that, but then she said, 'Does anyone still actually go to the theater?'"

He continued, "That's bloody rude when you're giving someone a medal for acting. It meant, 'Does anyone care a f--- about you because I don't. Now off you go!'"

McKellen's comments came in the context of a larger conversation about the pressures and difficulties of royal family members living in the public eye. "Imagine being born into the royal family," he said. "I've been in public life a bit, but these people are in prison. They can't do anything normal. Can you imagine having to be nice to everyone you talk to?"

The Gods and Monsters actor offered his evaluation of several of the U.K.'s royal men. "Hats off to anyone who manages to stay sane in that world," he said. "Like the [late] Duke of Edinburgh managed to do, although even he was deeply, deeply eccentric and I suspect deeply unhappy. Same with the present king [Charles]."

McKellen didn't mince words in his analysis of Prince Harry either. "He's probably not bright enough or doesn't have the right friends to really help himself," he said. "Mind you, he had the pick of all the pretty women in the world. I hope he's got the right one."

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The actor previously admitted to goofing around at Buckingham Palace with Dame Judi Dench. "We had a little twirl around the room, nobody else there, and I said, 'I think this is the throne room,'" he recalled in a 2018 appearance on The Graham Norton Show. "We went on dancing around the corner, and we found ourselves behind the band, and there behind this sort of partition was the thrones. So we sat on them. It brings out the worst in you, Buckingham Palace."

McKellen also questioned the tradition of thespian knighthood in a 2015 interview with Daily Mail. "Frankly, I don't think we should have titles, really," he said. "It's a very strange system, isn't it? Actors are more likely to get them than fire chiefs, or people who have spent their lives doing charity work, which is a bit unfair, isn't it?"

He also admitted that he strongly considered turning down the offer of knighthood: "I was in two minds about it. I liked being Mr McKellen. And if we all said no, it would stop."

The actor ultimately accepted the honor after a friend convinced him that it would be a meaningful opportunity for representation — one that might also help advance his career. "I was very involved with the gay rights movement at the time, and I called up three friends to ask them what they thought," he said. "The first said that having a knighted, openly gay man added a little more weight to one's ability to push a door."