Fans of both Harry Potter and Ian McKellen will be aggrieved to learn that the actor was actually considered for the role of Professor Dumbledore following the death of Richard Harris, but he turned it down because the latter didn't like him very much.

Ian McKellen waves at 'Beauty and the Beast' premiereIan McKellen waves at 'Beauty and the Beast' premiere

Despite the fact that we can't understand why anyone wouldn't adore Sir Ian McKellen, it seems that his late contemporary Richard Harris wasn't his biggest fan. In an interview on the BBC program 'HARDtalk', he spoke about the situation in front of an audience at the BBC Radio Theatre.

Interviewer Stephen Sackur brought up the fact that the actor who played Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films labelled Ian, Ian's 'Vicious' co-star Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh (who played Gilderoy Lockhart in 'Chamber of Secrets') as 'technically brilliant, but passionless'. To which Ian mused: 'Yeah... nonsense.'

'When he died - he played Dumbledore, of course, the wizard', he began, adding 'I played the real wizard' in reference to his role as Gandalf in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. 'When they called me up and said 'would I be interested in being in the Harry Potter films', they didn't say what part. I worked out what they were thinking and I couldn't. I couldn't take over the part from an actor who I'd known didn't approve of me.'

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Despite the fact that he's never appeared in a 'Harry Potter' film, he definitely sees a resemblance between himself and the actor who did take over the role. 'Sometimes when I see the posters of Michael Gambon, the actor who gloriously plays Dumbledore, I think sometimes it is me', he continued. 'You know we get asked for each other's autograph?'

Perhaps it would have been a little too predictable for Gandalf to become Dumbledore, as much as Ian McKellen would've smashed the role. And would we really want to go back and swap Michael Gambon if we could?