Here was a self- described mediocrity whose genius lay in recognising the latter quality in others pre-eminently Mozart even as

Here was a self- described “mediocrity” whose genius lay in recognising the latter quality in others (pre-eminently Mozart) even as the court composer knew he possessed none of it himself. As Iago in Trevor Nunn’s studio Othello in 1989, the actor redefined for ever a glassy-eyed Machiavelli from whom all compassion had been scarily cut away. His penultimate line, “what you know, you know,” registered a guile and cunning made even more terrifying by being unknowable.Indeed, if there’s anything particularly sweet about McKellen’s inclusion in the Oscars this year, it must be the possibility that he and Judi Dench could win trophies the same night, in so far as the two are long-time colleagues and friends and continue to be regarded as the best of all modern-day Macbeths in another Nunn RSC production from 1975.And, as with Dench, it wasn’t that long ago that McKellen and movies seemed an unhappy match. While Anthony Hopkins – 18 months McKellen’s senior – was notching up award after award (and swearing off the theatre for ever in order to do so), McKellen was tackling Chekhov (Uncle Vanya), Ayckbourn (Henceforward…) and De Filippo (Napoli Milionaria), with film roles generally relegated to vivid extended cameos (his putative star vehicle as DH Lawrence in the little-seen Priest of Love in 1981 notwithstanding): opposite Streep in Plenty, and Stockard Channing in Six Degrees of Separation.But, rather than sit idle, the newly politicised McKellen could use the stage as a forum for advocacy in his autobiographical solo show, A Knight Out, which became the itinerant calling-card of the post-”out” McKellen just as an earlier one-man show, Acting Shakespeare (for which he received a 1984 Tony nomination in New York) had been of the pre-”out” one. Returning to Sherman’s Holocaust drama Bent at the National in 1990, 11 years after a closeted McKellen had premiered the same show playing the same gay character at the Royal Court, McKellen took a long and deserved solo bow, as if to tell the audience he was back, unbeaten and unafraid.And that, perhaps, is the greatest paradox of all: that an actor who long kept his sexuality under wraps for fear that it might blight his career finds himself, two months from his 60th birthday, better-known and more feted than ever, while still being virtually the only internationally renowned actor who is openly gay.

Indeed, McKellen’s date for the Oscars will be the British theatre writer-director Sean Mathias (Les Parents Terribles, A Little Night Music), who staged the recent Bent revival and, before that, was McKellen’s long-time lover. Mathias was also by McKellen’s side on Broadway when the actor won his Tony 18 years ago. Receiving that award, McKellen thanked the New York audience (who “lift you so high”, he said, “that sometimes you feel you want to fly for them”) and his colleagues, but kept his off-stage life silent.It’s a transformed Ian McKellen, however, who is in Los Angeles this weekend. Whatever else happens during the 1999 Oscars, this much is certain: if McKellen wins, his acceptance speech alone should make it a night to remember.Life StoryVital statistics: Born 25 May 1939.

Knighted in 1979.Education: Wigan Grammar School; Bolton School; St Catherine’s College, CambridgeCareer: Professional debut in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry First London appearance in 1964 in A Scent of Flowers. First appeared at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974 and at London’s National Theatre in 1984Films: Starring film debut in 1981 as D H Lawrence in Priest of Love, followed by Scandal, Plenty, Six Degrees of Separation, Gods and Monsters (pictured) and Apt Pupil.Awards: Broadway’s 1981 Tony Award as Salieri in Amadeus A Golden Globe for Rasputin. Five-time Olivier Award-winner for Pillars of the Community (1977), The Alchemist (1978), Bent (1979), Wild Honey (1984), and Richard III (1991).He says: “I now understand what the Oscars are about – they’re about selling movies.”And would he like to win one? “Yes, very much.”. IF LOUIS Armstrong had not become the undisputed king of jazz, he would have made a world-class trainspotter. He was an assiduous collector of stuff, returning home from his tours laden with clippings, music scores, concert bills and tapes, which he hoarded in boxes at his New York home.

Much of the material is now open to public scrutiny in the Louis Armstrong Archive at New York’s City University, and reveals him to be the same joyous, life-enhancing entertainer off stage as he was in performance. The tapes, around 650 of them, each more than four hours long, were recorded on equipment Armstrong carried around the world with him in custom- made trunks “like a 1950s Walkman”, according to the archive’s director Michael Cogswell.
This improvised technology that Satchmo used to record everything from hotel-room trumpet solos to his thoughts on contemporary events is significant. In all things Armstrong was an innovator, embracing the new with enthusiasm. He owned one of the very first movie cameras in the 1930s, and travelled with a typewriter from as early as 1922.

Among his many tape recorders was a very early cassette deck.The enduring image of Louis Armstrong, wreathed in smiles before another raspy-voiced chorus of some popular song like “Hello Dolly!” or “Mack the Knife”, comes from his later years and clearly only tells a small part of his story.Armstrong was more than just a popular entertainer with a horn and a white handkerchief He was one of music’s true revolutionaries. His improvisational verve and technical virtuosity virtually defined jazz in the 1920s. So profound, so indisputable was Armstrong’s contribution to the developing art form of jazz that Dizzy Gillespie, the trumpet giant of the later be-bop generation, said quite simply, “No him, no me.”The background from which Armstrong emerged to place his unique stamp on American popular music makes his achievement doubly heroic. His mother, the grand-daughter of slaves, raised him in the early years of the century unassisted, a visible father being something of a rarity in the notorious Storyville district of New Orleans.The fact that he first picked up a cornet at the age of 13 to play alongside fellow inmates in New Orleans’ Coloured Waifs’ Home gives a clue to the nature of his upbringing.Not that Satchmo was some mistreated, eager-to-please pup ready to do tricks for his masters.