If you’ve ever done a fantasy movie marathon night with your friends and started watching the Harry Potter movies, and then switched to The Lord of the Rings instead, you might have confused two wizards with looong white fuzzy beards.
Yes right, we’re talking about two of the most famous and powerful wizards in history: Dumbledore and Gandalf!
Michael Gambon (right) did a great job bringing Dumbledore back on screen, after the original actor Richard Harris passed away after Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002. But seeing the two characters side by side, we can really see the resemblance between Gambon and fellow actor Sir Ian McKellen (left). Gandalf could be the other brother of our beloved Professor Albus Dumbledore.
Well, McKellen has now revealed that he was actually asked to play the Hogwarts’ headmaster but he rejected the popular role. McKellen said that he felt that he had to decline the incredible role due to Harris’ previous comments about his acting.
Credit Warner Bros.
“When he died – he played Dumbledore, the wizard – I played the real wizard [Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy] of course – but when they called me up and said would I be interested in being in the Harry Potter films, they didn’t say what part,” Sir Ian McKellen told the BBC.
The British icon recalled that Harris described him as “technically brilliant, but passionless.”
He continued: “I worked out what they were thinking and I couldn’t. I couldn’t take over the part from an actor who I’d known hadn’t approved of me.”
Luckily, Michael Gambon dared to follow Richard Harris’ big footprints and filled the challenging role of Dumbledore with just the right warm-hearted kind of charm, power and mysterious magic.
It’s ood to know that we’re not the only ones who sometimes mistake Ian McKellen and Michael Gambon. It even happens to Gandalf himself!
“Sometimes when I see posters of Michael Gambon, the actor who gloriously plays Dumbledore, I think it’s me. You know, we get asked for each other’s autographs!” he laughed.
