Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen is not just a legend of Shakespearean theatre, but a sci-fi/fantasy icon thanks to his role in not one but two major franchises. He’s the one and only Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies, plus he shares the role of Magneto with Michael Fassbender in the X-Men universe. What we bet you didn’t know, however, was that Ian McKellen has also featured in Doctor Who.
What makes us so sure you didn’t know this is that McKellen had a voice-only role in an episode from a few years back. 2012’s Christmas special “The Snowmen” saw the actor lend his iconic tones to the Great Intelligence, a snow-based entity that created an army of killer snowmen foot soldiers in order to take over the world. Though the villain later became the big bad of season 7, the role was taken over by Richard E. Grant in subsequent appearances.
This isn’t McKellen’s only brush with Doctor Who, though. In 2013, past Doctors Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy got together to make a fun comedy special to celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary. It was filled with famous faces, including a cameo from McKellen in full costume as Gandalf, filmed on the set of The Hobbit in New Zealand.