Gandalf from The Lord of The Rings and Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series are considered to be two of the most famous fictional wizards.
It turned out that Ian McKellen, who was famous for playing Gandalf in Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit films, was considered to replace Richard Harris as Dumbledore after Harris passed away in 2002.
McKellen was recently interviewed on BBC's HARDTalk show, where he revealed that he was contacted about being cast for Harry Potter — but he didn't take the offer.
Interviewer Stephen Sackur was talking about McKellen's critics and recited a quote from Richard Harris about McKellen and some other actors. He mentioned when Harris described McKellen "technically brilliant but passionless."
"Yeah," said McKellen. "Nonsense."
McKellen shared the time he received a phone call about Harry Potter after Harris died.
"When they called me up and said would I be interested in being in the Harry Potter films, they didn't say in what part," McKellen said.
"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."
"You mean you could've been Dumbledore?" asked Sackur.
McKellen jokingly responded: "Well sometimes, when I see the posters of Mike Gambon, the actor who gloriously plays Dumbledore, I think sometimes it is me."
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