A Pirates Of The Caribbean Star Was Nearly Cast As X-Men’s Magneto

Sir Ian McKellen may be one of the greatest living Shakespearean performers (if not the greatest), but casual movie fans will probably most recognize the English actor for his turn as Gandalf from “The Lord of the Rings” or as Magneto from “X-Men.” J.R.R. Tolkien and Chris Claremont, those writers are worthy company of the Bard!

While it now feels impossible to imagine anyone else appearing opposite Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier in “X-Men,” McKellen wasn’t the only actor in the running to play Magneto. According to a 2023 commentary track on the original 2000 “X-Men” film by writer David Hayter, Bill Nighy was also considered to play Magneto. The film’s now disgraced director Bryan Singer had seen Nighy perform in the 1998 movie “Still Crazy” and was impressed.

(Hayter misremembered the title of the movie as “Strange Fruit,” which is actually the name of the fictional rock band in the movie. Nighy played lead singer Ray Simms, and he sung in-character for the film’s soundtrack.)

“I think I found our Magneto,” Hayter recalled Singer saying after seeing “Still Crazy.” After flying to London to meet with Nighy, though, Singer decided the casting wouldn’t be “quite right.”

Nighy has been acting since the 1960s, but he really started to break out in the 1990s with some acclaimed stage work. Note how his first major acting award nomination (a Satellite Award for “Still Crazy”) happened in 1998. He got even more famous in the 2000s by starring in the movie “Love Actually” and then the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films as undead squid-headed pirate Davy Jones, captain of ghost ship the Flying Dutchman.

If Nighy had played Magneto, he could’ve become a star a few years earlier.

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies get divisive after 2003’s original “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” but I’ve never seen anyone describe Davy Jones as anything but a magnificent villain. And while much of the praise tends to go to the incredible CGI used to bring Jones’ mutated appearance to life, we’d be remiss not to single-out Bill Nighy’s performance, too.

Nighy gave the character a soul; it’s a testament to both the actor and special effects that his every expression, from glee to frustration to heartbreak, comes through perfectly, even across Jones’ mucus-filled green face. It’s not only the CGI that makes Jones feel like a real human being, either.

Playing the Flying Dutchman captain with a Scottish accent, Nighy infuses his line reads as Jones with delicious malice. Think of his very first line, said to a bleeding, terrified sailor, each word enunciated to perfection: “Do you fear death? Do you fear that dark abyss? All your deeds laid bare, all your sins punished?! I can offer you an escape.”

Beneath the cruelty, there’s heartbreak; Jones once loved the sea goddess Calypso (Naomie Harris), who spurned him. Jones haunts the Flying Dutchman not just with his presence, but the organ he pours his anguish into every night. (Played not with his hands, but his beard of tentacles!)

This makes Jones not too far off from Magneto; a grandiose yet sympathetic figure who lets his past personal tragedies make him heartless. Nighy has proven himself an actor in Ian McKellen’s league, too, so it’s tempting to think Bryan Singer made the wrong call about Nighy playing Magneto. But I still think it worked out for the best, and not just because of McKellen’s superlative acting skills.

An essential part of “X-Men,” and what makes it richer than most other superhero stories, is the allegory. Mutants are hated and feared for being different, which the comics, cartoons, and films have all used to explore real-world prejudice. In the 1980s, Magneto was revised into a Holocaust survivor who wishes to save mutants from another Final Solution. The “X-Men” movies embrace this backstory; the 2000 film opens with a young Magneto being taken from his parents in Auschwitz.

While Ian McKellen is neither Jewish nor a Holocaust survivor like Magneto, he had personal experience he could map onto Magneto’s. McKellen is a gay man, one who came of age when it was deeply socially unacceptable to be one; he was alive in the 1980s when his own government and the U.K. media was playing up homophobic fears about the AIDs epidemic.

McKellen came out as gay in 1988 and has been a vocal activist for his community. He’s also said that the allegory of “X-Men,” of a minority group fighting for civil rights, helped convince him to play Magneto. McKellen once thought he’d been miscast as Magneto as he lacked a superhero physique, but it was much more important to have someone who could bring authenticity to the character’s struggles.

In fact, I’d argue that mutants started to be seen as a queer allegory first and foremost due to the “X-Men” movies. Magneto is not canonically gay (even if most X-Fans would probably agree that Charles Xavier is the love of his life, and vice versa), but McKellen’s experiences being so absolutely helped realize the villain onscreen. Bill Nighy is a great actor, but as a heterosexual man, he simply couldn’t bring to Magneto what McKellen did.