TORONTO — The war of words between actors Damien Lewis and Ian McKellen appears to have come to a peaceful resolution.
Lewis, who stars on the acclaimed series Homeland, issued a statement Wednesday apologizing to McKellen.
“I am hugely embarrassed that comments of mine have been linked in a negative way to Sir Ian McKellen,” he said. “I have always been, and continue to be, an enormous fan and admirer of Sir Ian’s. He’s one of the greats and one of the reasons I became an actor.”
McKellen responded via Twitter.
“There was no need for @Lewis_Damian to apologise to me, as I thought his comments were fair. But he’s a gentleman…Now I hope @lewis_damian enjoys @TheHobbitMovie DOS as much as I enjoy @SHO_Homeland.”
Why did Lewis feel the need to apologize?
In an October interview with the UK newspaper The Guardian, he talked about how he used to fear being stuck doing theatre and ending up “one of these slightly over-the-top, fruity actors who would have an illustrious career on stage, but wouldn’t start getting any kind of film work until I was 50 and then start playing wizards.”
McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit movies, responded by saying Lewis “needn’t worry about me.”
McKellen told Radio Times: “I wouldn’t like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue and was stuck doing scripts that I didn’t particularly like just to keep the income up.”
In his public statement, Lewis said it was a “generic analogy that was never intended to demean or describe anyone else’s career.”
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