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Sir Ian McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire on 25 May 1939. He is 85 years old. He is a celebrated actor on stage and screen and is famous for playing Magneto in the X-Men<\/em> films and Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings<\/em> and The Hobbit<\/em> films. He has won awards including a Tony award, six Oliviers and a Golden Globe and has twice been nominated for an Oscar. He is also known as a campaigner for LGBT rights.<\/p> At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/a><\/em>, Ian says he would like to find out more about his paternal grandmother, Alice McKellen, who he never met, and was apparently something of a performer herself.<\/p> To begin his journey, Ian heads to Cheshire, where she lived with her husband and became known as \u2018Mother Mac\u2019. She evidently had a great singing voice and was a member of Christian Endeavour \u2013 a religious group that engaged in social activism.<\/p> When visiting his grandparents\u2019 local church near Stockport, Ian is surprised to find himself in the place of his own baptism<\/a>. Mother Mac was a leading figure in the choir and sang solo in front of 10,000 people at a Christian Endeavour welcome meeting in 1902.<\/p> Surprisingly, the 1871 census records<\/a> that Alice\u2019s uncle, Frank Lowes (Ian\u2019s great great uncle), was also a professional actor living in Stretford, Manchester. Ian browses the theatrical records at Manchester Central Library<\/a> and discovers that Frank performed in the city\u2019s top theatres, sometimes topping the bill.<\/p> However, Frank got his biggest break when The Two Orphans<\/em>, a successful London production, came to Bolton \u2013 the town where Ian spent his teenage years. Heading to the Octagon Theatre<\/a>, Ian meets theatre historian Dr James Moran to find out more and even gets to read the lines Frank would have spoken himself.<\/p> But sadly, Frank\u2019s work dried up when his agent moved to the US. He was forced to take lesser jobs, spending a lot of his time performing in cheap music halls across Liverpool.<\/p>