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Home/McKellen: Playing the Part/Similar Movies

McKellen: Playing the Part

Movies Like McKellen: Playing the Part (2018)

McKellen: Playing the Part is a 2018 documentary, history film from Joe Stephenson with a MovieMagicScore of 7.2/10. Here are 20 similar films, ranked by real viewer ratings — starting with I Am Divine and Variações: Guardian Angel.

Documentary History

I Am Divine poster

I Am Divine

2014

Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.

Variações: Guardian Angel poster

Variações: Guardian Angel

2019

Film biography dwelling on the hectic artistic life of António Variações, a famous Portuguese pop rock singer from the 80s, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1984.

The Trials of Oscar Wilde poster

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

1960

England, 1890s. The brutal and embittered Marquis of Queensberry, who believes that his youngest son, Bosie, has an inappropriate relationship with the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, maintains an ongoing feud with the latter in order to ruin his reputation and cause his fall from grace.

Pain and Glory poster

Pain and Glory

2019

Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

Tom of Finland poster

Tom of Finland

2017

Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.

Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon poster

Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

1998

In the 1960s, British painter Francis Bacon surprises a burglar and invites him to share his bed. The burglar, a working class man named George Dyer, accepts. After the unique beginning to their love affair, the well-connected and volatile artist assimilates Dyer into his circle of eccentric friends, as Dyer's struggle with addiction strains their bond.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender poster

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender

2012

Archive footage of interviews, concerts and personal material bring to light the solo performance work of Mercury, the lead singer of Queen.

Little Richard: I Am Everything poster

Little Richard: I Am Everything

2023

The story of the black, gay origins of rock n' roll. It explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard's complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon's life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions.

Mapplethorpe poster

Mapplethorpe

2019

A look at the life of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from his rise to fame in the 1970s to his untimely death in 1989.

A Man Called Ove poster

A Man Called Ove

2015

Despite being deposed as president of his condominium association, grumpy 59-year-old Ove continues to watch over his neighbourhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and she accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox, it sets off a series of unexpected changes in his life.

As Good as It Gets poster

As Good as It Gets

1997

Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction, is rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor, Simon. After Simon is brutally attacked and hospitalized, Melvin finds his life turned upside down when he has to look after Simon's dog. In addition, Carol, the only waitress at the local diner who will tolerate him, leaves work to care for her chronically ill son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast.

Little Ashes poster

Little Ashes

2008

About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.

Paragraph 175 poster

Paragraph 175

2000

During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.

Prayers for Bobby poster

Prayers for Bobby

2009

Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.

In Cold Blood poster

In Cold Blood

1967

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

The Lion in Winter poster

The Lion in Winter

1968

Henry II and his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, battle over the choice of an heir.

The Times of Harvey Milk poster

The Times of Harvey Milk

1984

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

Milk poster

Milk

2008

The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.

Bent poster

Bent

1997

Max is a handsome young man who, after a fateful tryst with a German soldier, is forced to run for his life. Eventually Max is placed in a concentration camp where he pretends to be Jewish because in the eyes of the Nazis, gays are the lowest form of human being. But it takes a relationship with an openly gay prisoner to teach Max that without the love of another, life is not worth living.

Toast poster

Toast

2010

Young Nigel Slater has big culinary aspirations, even though all his mother knows how to make is toast. When his mother dies, relations grow strained between Nigel and his father, especially when he remarries a woman who wins his heart with a lemon meringue pie. Nigel enters culinary school, starts working in a pub, and finds himself competing with his stepmother - both in the kitchen and for his father's attention.

Frequently asked

What are the best movies like McKellen: Playing the Part?

The top films similar to McKellen: Playing the Part by MovieMagicScore are I Am Divine (7.3), Variações: Guardian Angel (6.9), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (6.3). Each shares documentary/history themes and is ranked by real viewer ratings, not critics or studios.

Is McKellen: Playing the Part worth watching?

McKellen: Playing the Part holds a MovieMagicScore of 7.2/10 from 20 viewer ratings, putting it among the better-reviewed titles in its genre.

What kind of movie is McKellen: Playing the Part?

McKellen: Playing the Part (2018) is a documentary, history film directed by Joe Stephenson, starring Ian McKellen, Scott Chambers, Luke Evans.

Where can I find more recommendations like McKellen: Playing the Part?

Browse the full ranked list above, or explore more documentary recommendations on MovieMagicScore, where every list is ordered by genuine viewer ratings.

Keep exploring

Movies like I Am Divine Movies like Variações: Guardian Angel Movies like The Trials of Oscar Wilde Movies like Pain and Glory Movies like Tom of Finland Movies like Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

About movies like McKellen: Playing the Part

This ranked list pairs McKellen: Playing the Part (2018), a documentary and history film from Joe Stephenson, with similar titles by genre, theme and cast overlap (fans of Ian McKellen take note). Unlike critic-driven sites, every position here is ordered by MovieMagicScore — a rating built only from real viewers, with no studio marketing or paid placement. Scores update as more people rate, so the list stays current.

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