He's fought a Balrog, a Necromancer and Professor Xavier, but acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen announced on Wednesday that he's been fighting prostate cancer for several years.
"I've had prostate cancer for six or seven years," he told the Daily Mirror. "When you have got it you monitor it and you have to be careful it doesn't spread. But if it is contained in the prostate it's no big deal."
"Many, many men die from it but it's one of the cancers that is totally treatable so I have 'waitful watching'. I am examined regularly and it's just contained, it's not spreading. I've not had any treatment," he said.
Prostate cancer often grows very slowly--so slowly that patients will often die of old age before the cancer becomes life threatening.
"You do gulp when you hear the news. It's like when you go for an HIV test, you go 'arghhh is this the end of the road?" said McKellen.
"They come and say you have cancer of the prostate and then they say you can have it zapped, you can have it snipped but you are not a candidate for that. You are waitful watching."
"I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn't know they had got it and it went on the rampage. But at my age if it is diagnosed its not life threatening."
McKellen had nothing but praise for his doctors at Britain's National Health Service.
"You are told what the situation is: you can have an operation but there is no point me having an operation because there is no need for it," he said.
"What they are concerned about is the cancer going to spread outside the prostate? If it doesn't you are fine."
"How do you know if it is spreading? You keep being tested."
The "Hobbit" actor just finished filming all three parts of the new fantasy franchise in New Zealand, reprising his role as the wizard Gandalf the Grey in the prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."
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