 McKellen was born on 25 May 1939 in Burnley , Lancashire , the son of Margery Lois ( née Sutcliffe ) and Denis Murray McKellen , a civil engineer . He was their second child , with a sister , Jean , five years his senior . Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 , his family moved to Wigan . They lived there through the war and his early childhood . They relocated to Bolton in 1951 , after his father had been promoted . The experience of living through the war as a young child had a lasting impact on him , and he later claimed that " only after peace resumed ... did I realise that war wasn 't normal . " When an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of 11 September attacks , McKellen said : " Well , darling , you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old . " 
