Sir Ian McKellen was offered $1.5 million to dress up as Gandalf from “The Lord of the Rings” movies and officiate at the wedding of a Facebook billionaire — but he turned it down.
Napster founder and first Facebook president Sean Parker asked the actor three years ago to play dress up at his lavish, $10 million wedding to singer Alexandra Lenas, The Daily Mail reported Saturday.
Gandalf sent his regrets.
“I was offered one-and-a-half million dollars to marry a very famous couple in California, which I would perhaps have considered doing, but I had to go dressed as Gandalf,” McKellen told the Mail.
“So I said, ‘I am sorry, Gandalf doesn’t do weddings.’”
Gandalf would have been right at home.
Parker’s wedding was staged in a redwood forest in Big Sur, Calif., attended by 364 guests, each custom-fitted in Tolkien-styled costumes, according to Vanity Fair’s coverage at the time.
Guests included Sting, Sean Lennon, Emma Watson, and enough Internet tycoons to fill Silicon Valley.
The award-winning McKellen is famous for his portrayals of Gandalf and the X-Men movies’ Magneto.
But it was at McKellen’s current theater gig — alongside Patrick Stewart in “No Man’s Land” in London — that the Mail caught up with him.
“I don’t go dressing up,” he explained of turning down the lucrative gig. “Except in plays and things at places like this.”