Classic roles keep coming to McKellen

“He said it was the best play he had ever seen in his entire life,’’ the actor recalls, and chortles at the irony. McKellen is sitting on a terrace overlooking a sunny garden at the British Embassy, one cream-colored pant leg folded over the other, as he reflects on the global exposure that resulted from his recurring roles in two astoundingly lucrative movie franchises: the wizard Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings’’ and Magneto, the twisted mutant of “X-Men.’’

The boy might have been bribed to go to Shakespeare with the carrot of Gandalf, but why should McKellen care whether an audience finds him through iambic pentameter or movie, er, magnetism? He says he is gratified by his new-found visibility, his unlikely box office invincibility. And he’s pleased that there may be many more converts where that awestruck 10-year-old came from.

“People recognize me now, people who never go to the theater,’’ McKellen says. “That’s been the loveliest thing for me, that people want to meet me. And ‘Lord of the Rings’ is a very big part of it.’’

Not, of course, the whole part. The 70-year-old McKellen is one of the most gifted classical actors of his generation. His Macbeth, his Richard III - the latter enshrined in a 1995 movie version he adapted and produced - set contemporary standards for these timeless roles.

Which is the reason he is staying in a corner suite at the embassy and affably discussing the state of his career: The Shakespeare Theatre Company honored him with its annual Will Award, which he picked up at the company’s gala.

McKellen is one of those actors who has been able to maintain his highbrow stage presence while making regular forays into popular culture. His latest along those commercial lines starts up in mid-November on basic cable’s AMC channel, when he appears as the enigmatic No. 2 in a remake of the mind-bending ’60s British series “The Prisoner,’’ with Jim Caviezel in the title role.

It was the film of “Richard III,’’ he says, and his Oscar-nominated performance as director James Whale in 1998’s “Gods and Monsters,’’ that propelled him to his roles in blockbusters and, to this comfortable juncture of his life.

But he also credits the uptick in his show business profile with the growth of his comfort level with himself, a peace of mind that developed after revealing that he was gay in 1988 during a BBC Radio program examining the Thatcher government’s policies toward homosexuality. “It all happened since I came out, ironically,’’ McKellen says.

The belief among some in his field that opportunities get narrower after such candor is mythology to him. “I’m living proof the opposite is true,’’ he says.