Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
BRISTOL, England — It’s not uncommon for schools and universities to host famous guests and speakers. In fact, it’s quite the trend for familiar Hollywood faces to be invited to prestigious schools to give commencement speeches, from Ellen DeGeneres and Stephen Colbert to Amy Poehler and Bill Cosby.
While those speeches tend to be on the casual side and often funny, they don’t have the same magical thrill of the spontaneous motivational speech Sir Ian McKellan gave to an informal gathering of students at Chew Valley School in Bristol, England.
Although McKellen has had a long and successful career, millennials (and maybe all of us) probably know McKellen best as Magneto from “The X-Men” or Gandalf from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. So it’s only fitting that McKellen chose arguably his most famous line as Gandalf to inspire the performing arts students as they prepared for exams.
McKellen asks the students what will happen if they don’t do their revisions properly (or to us American English speakers, study properly), then channels his role as Gandalf to answer, “You shall not pass!” much to the delight of all involved. He even pantomimes plunging a magical staff to the ground to complete the effect.