So will ‘X-Men’ have people asking, ‘Why?’

Forget busy summers. Ian McKellen has had more big-screen action packed into the month of May than most British stage actors could hope for in a career.

In the film adaptation of Dan Brown‘s best seller “The Da Vinci Code,” McKellen played Sir Leigh Teabing, the sinfully wealthy, polio-afflicted aristocrat who joins Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou‘s characters on their quest for the Holy Grail.

And he reprises his role as Magneto, a villainous mutant who uses his ability to control metals to take on his heroic fellow freaks of nature, in “X-Men: The Last Stand.”

This from an actor who’s already got a monumental film project behind him as Gandalf, the sagacious wizard from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy – a role that earned him his second Academy Awards nomination after 1998’s “Gods and Monsters.”

McKellen, who turned 67 on Thursday, is a latecomer to Hollywood after decades as one of England’s leading theatrical performers.

An outspoken gay-rights activist since declaring his homosexuality in the late 1980s, he likens the fear of mutants in “X-Men” with societal homophobia.

Q: What’s Magneto up to this time in “X-Men.”

A: I do like this story, because this begins in the Oval Office with the president having just appointed a minister for mutants. It’s Kelsey Grammer painted blue, as it turns out. And then they discover a cure for mutancy. Think of the dilemma that minister is put in, at the heart of the establishment and the heart of the capitalist world. We’ve got to peddle the lie that we’re all the same so we all buy the same products. That’s why they don’t like openly gay people on TV. We upset the view that we’re all the same.

What is Magneto going to say about that? Well, what everybody should say. Not on your life! There are people who think you can cure homosexuality. Scientologists will tell you they can cure you. They can cure you! Well, Magneto suddenly became an easy part to play.

Q: Because you could relate to that notion, people saying they’re going to cure your “aberration?”

A: Yes. And as he says, “We are the cure.” Great stuff.

Q: Your early career was largely on stage, with roles here and there in film or television. How odd was it to suddenly become a movie star in your 60s?

A: I can’t really believe it, nor can anyone else, actually. It is an unusual thing to happen, because I’m not yet as old as people perhaps think I am. Gandalf was 7,000 years old. And I’ve got another 10 years in me, probably, of capering.

The birthday bunch

Singer Gladys Knight is 62. Singer John Fogerty is 61. Country singer Phil Vassar is 44. Singer Kylie Minogue is 38. Actress Monica Keena (“Dawson’s Creek”) is 27.