Ian McKellen

If you were paid over a million bucks to write a book about your extraordinary life, the chances are you’d work pretty hard to earn that money.

And that’s exactly what famous Oscar-nominated actor Sir Ian McKellen planned to do. According to remarks he recently gave at the Oxford Literary Festival, the Lord of the Rings star planned to devote nine months to penning his autobiography.

But sometimes its best to leave the past where it is, as McKellen soon discovered:

“It was a bit painful,” he said. “I didn’t want to go back into my life and imagine things that I hadn’t understood so far. The privacy of my life I don’t quite understand myself, and it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. So there you go, I’m sorry.”

So Sir Ian abandoned the project, and the world will never have chance to read his memoirs. And as for that $1.4 million advance? Well, the actor quickly returned it to his disappointed publisher. So, for now, we’ll just have to keep watching his movies and forget about his personal story.

Would you pen your story for a million bucks?

H/T: The Hollywood Reporter

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