Actor and mobile dignity reservoir Sir Ian McKellen has worn some silly costumes in his decades on stage and screen, but always in service of his craft. The beloved thespian made that clear in a recent interview with The Daily Mail, in which he revealed that he turned down $1.5 million to officiate the Lord Of The Rings-themed wedding of Napster founder Sean Parker. McKellen said he might have considered the offer, except that the happy couple requested he do his duties in the guise of Gandalf the wizard. (Whiteness or Grayness apparently TBD.)
“I said, ‘I am sorry, Gandalf doesn’t do weddings,’” McKellen told reporters, breaking the hearts of wistful wizard-lovers worldwide. Meanwhile, the 2013 wedding—set in a Big Sur, California campsite converted to look like a ruined Middle-Earth castle—apparently did some potential damage to the redwood forest it was held in. Which means that waving a bag of cash in McKellen’s face to get him to stomp his feet and perform the old Elvish wedding standard “Can’t Help Falling In Khazad-dûm”(“Wise men say… Fly you fools, rush, in…) was only the second most obnoxious of Parker’s matrimonial crimes.
Of course, it’s possible that the tech entrepreneur just didn’t want McKellen to feel out of place or under-dressed, since apparently everybody at the wedding was dressed in LOTR cosplay, courtesy of the bridge and groom. Because—to paraphrase Justin Timberlake’s performance as Parker in The Social Network—a million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Getting married in a crowd full of your loved ones, who you’ve forced to dress up like hobbits, dwarves, and elves.