Johannesburg — WHETHER he is traipsing through Middle Earth with a gnarled staff, or lying in a ditch in the bleak absurdist landscape of Samuel Beckett, English actor Ian McKellen manages to immortalise every role he takes on.

So it was a surprise to see McKellen parodying himself in the television comedy show, Extras, opposite Ricky Gervais's (creator and star of The Office) character, Andy Millman. The YouTube video of this skit has been viewed more than 130000 times.

On the show, with an unflinching deadpan expression, McKellen asked: "How do I act so well? What I do," he answered, "is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play." As Gandalf, how did he know what to say? The words were written down for him in the script. He had to act! He had to imagine!

"I knew from the outset I was going to be mocked," says McKellen, who was in Cape Town recently. After two years of touring with a critically acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot, McKellen and his cast were in SA to perform Beckett's seminal play at The Fugard Theatre.

"What they chose as my main characteristic and, I suppose, quality as a person, is that I rabbit on about acting - but that's only because people like you ask me questions about it. It's a bit unfair ... then I get blamed if I sound too pompous," he says with a barely visible smile, hidden in part by his unruly white beard.

Seventy-one-year-old McKellen, who was knighted in 1991, is quintessentially British. Throughout our conversation his tone saunters between a sincere seriousness and sardonic, understated humour. There is a slight edge of haughtiness below his polite demeanour; his cadence influenced more by his 22 years' membership of the Royal Shakespeare Company and performances at the National Theatre, than the broadly northern accent of his native Wigan.

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play in which two aged tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for the ineffable Godot, who never arrives.

McKellen's Estragon is a complex character. On stage his witty repertoire and physical clowning one minute is juxtaposed with melancholic musings the next. Famous existential refrains include, "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful" and, "What about hanging ourselves?"

"Well, he's very unhappy," McKellen explains. "He can't see any future. I wouldn't say he's suicidal; it is one way out - death - it occurs to you when you get older, you're very aware of death."

Watching this British production, a South African theatre audience can't help but be reminded of Mncedisi Shabangu's opening line: "Nothing ever happens here. Fok all" - from the narrator in Lara Foot Newton's extraordinary play, Tshepang.

South African discourse has a tendency to put cultured foreign visitors on a pedestal. So instead of focusing on how a South African audience views a highbrow British production, I'm interested in McKellen's observations of performing in SA; how he understands the play's relevance to local audiences. With arched eyebrow, he says: "Well we aren't taking this play around trying to lecture people, it's not a lecture, it's not a philosophical treatise. It's entertainment, it's tragic-comedy, it's a story and we tell it in our way.

"We're all British actors and this is a production that was devised in London and it probably reeks of Europe to an African sensibility; but it being a masterpiece I know that it appeals all over the world ... you don't need to have a black man on the end of (Lucky's) rope to make the point that the play is in part about slavery."

South Africans' most highly regarded production of Waiting for Godot is probably the Baxter Theatre's apartheid- era production starring John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Bill Flynn and Peter Piccolo. The multiracial cast, approved by Beckett himself, caused quite a stir back then.

Over and above the play's universal appeal, is McKellen aware not just of the profound influence on South African theatre of previous stagings , but also of that of Godot?

"Well I don't think (Fugard's) The Island (first performed by John Kani and Winston Ntshona in SA in 1973) perhaps could have been written without Waiting for Godot, but you could say the same of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, or plays by Pinter," McKellen explains.

This is not McKellen's first visit to SA. In 1995 he brought us A Knight Out, a solo show about being a gay actor. SA had recently held its first democratic elections and was in the throes of forging a progressive new constitution.

McKellen brought the one-hander here to raise awareness around gay rights and to raise funds for the Constitutional Commission, which campaigned for the criminalis ation of discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. While here, he also a paid a lobbying visit to the Presidency. McKellen "came out" publicly at the relatively late age of 49, but ever since has been an ardent activist and a founding member of UK equality and gay rights organisation Stonewall.

One wonders how he finds the time to be a committed activist, considering he is such a busy, sought-after actor.

Other than his Oscar-nominated celluloid portrayal of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, McKellen's memorable movie roles include Richard III, Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code and X-Men's villainous mastermind, Magneto. Sequentially, Gandalf was hot on the heals of the Magneto role - was it a conscious decision to go from playing an arch-villain to playing an icon of morality?

"It often looks like it, doesn't it, that actors have been organising their careers in the way that a writer might organise their thoughts? But no, those jobs just happened to be next door to each other ... and I was very pleased to have them both.

"It is the case that I've played a lot of villains ... Iago, Macbeth, Richard III and Magneto. But that's only a reflection that writers tend to give the best parts to villains.... I've been blessed really that Gandalf is, for want of a better word, a good character and yet an entertaining and rich part to play."

While McKellen is the first choice, it is still unconfirmed whether he will be cast as Gandalf again in the much anticipated film version of The Hobbit, as the project is still subject to finance.

"We always find something," Estragon casually remarks in Act II, "to give us the impression we exist."

More than just an articulate vagrant or mere "conjurer of cheap tricks" - as Gandalf once warns Hobbit Bilbo Baggins - it appears that McKellen exists to act.