Ian McKellen still experiencing ‘agonising pains’ two months after stage fall

Sir Ian McKellen has shared an update on his health following his dramatic fall off the stage in London’s West End.

The veteran of stage and screen was playing Falstaff in Robert Icke’s Player Kings, at the Noël Coward Theatre, when he fell during a battle scene in June. The following day he was said to be making a “speedy and full recovery” after being taken to hospital.

The Lord of the Rings star cancelled his appearance in the final few performances to focus on his health.

Now, speaking to Saga magazine, the gay actor has said: “I’ve relived that fall I don’t know how many times. It was horrible,” adding that his foot got “caught in a chair” and he slipped on newspapers on the stage, as if he was “on a skateboard”.

He ended up “on the lap” of a member of the audience in the theatre’s front row.

“I started screaming, ‘Help me,’ then ‘I’m sorry, I don’t do this’. Extraordinary things. I thought it was the end of something,” McKellen explained, clarifying that by “the end” he meant his “participation in the play” rather than his death.

He felt “such shame” about having “let down” the show’s production, because the play had to head out on a UK tour without him. His neck remains in a brace, his hand is still “splinted”, and he is wary about leaving his house.

“My chipped vertebrae and fractured wrist are not yet mended,” he said. “I don’t go out because I get nervous in case someone bangs into me, and I’ve got agonising pains in my shoulders to do with my whole frame having been jolted.”

But the 85-year-old actor added: “I’ve had a lucky escape really.” The role called for him to wearing a fat suit which protected his “ribs and other joints” from serious injury.

While he is still be recovering, fans can see McKellen in cinemas, alongside Gemma Arterton, Lesley Manville, Mark Strong and The Chronicles of Narnia star Ben Barnes, in Anand Tucker’s crime drama The Critic, from 13 September.

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