It's fitting that a film set in the English theater marks the first collaboration for British acting royals Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Ian McKellen.
Hopkins plays Sir, an aging leading man in a traveling company, and McKellen is Norman, his vigilant attendant, in Starz's The Dresser, an adaptation of Ronald Harwood's play (Monday, 9 ET/PT) set in World War II England.
McKellen says he took the role of Norman simply to act with Hopkins, but he came to appreciate Harwood's script as he played the man who dresses the increasingly confused actor and keeps him focused on the play.
"It's surprising how often films and plays about actors get it wrong, but this script doesn't. The intricacies of the relationship and the way they talk to each other was absolutely truthful," he says. (The play was also made into a 1983 film starring Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney.)
Years ago, Hopkins, 78, and McKellen, 77, were part of England's Royal National Theatre company under the great Laurence Olivier, but they never performed together. Hopkins, who focused on films (The Silence of the Lambs) , says he was uncomfortable with stage acting, but he admires McKellen's work in Shakespeare's Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet.
"I never felt secure" in theater, Hopkins says. Stage acting requires "a very strange balance between egotism, confidence and humility. I think Ian's got that well balanced. It's a sane, calm approach. I didn't have that."
McKellen, who will tour England this summer with X-Men co-star Patrick Stewart in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, says The Dresser acting troupe's decision to continue its performance despite air raids and sirens "represents a nation going through bad times but refusing to give in. Their audiences stick with them through thick and thin."
The film, directed by Richard Eyre, includes Her Ladyship (Emily Watson), an actress and Sir's companion; stage manager Madge (Sarah Lancashire); and Thornton (Edward Fox), a dedicated older actor.
But the aging contemporaries at its center "makes it a very powerful love story, because it’s two old codgers who are cantankerous. They love and hate each other, like The Sunshine Boys," Hopkins says.
Shakespeare's King Lear, depicting an old man's descent into madness, is appropriate, says Hopkins, who portrays Lear in the play within the film.
"It's the part that all old men want to play," he says. "Lear is about life and death, the whole conundrum of force and pride and impatience, and finally, the horror of realizing you've made huge mistakes in your life."
Hopkins has upcoming roles in HBO's Westworld and Thor: Ragnarok. Asked if he'll ever stop acting, as Her Ladyship wants Sir to do, he describes his wife's visit to a film set.
"We were at this terrible location: Cold, desolate, filthy. She came to visit and I said, 'Isn't this wonderful?' She said, 'This is terrible. Are you really enjoying this?' I said, 'Yeah.' She said, 'OK, it's your life,' " he says. "She knows that if I did give it up, it would probably be the end of my life."
