Even Ian McKellen asked Ron Howard, "Are you sure you've cast the right actor?"

After all, McKellen had read "The Da Vinci Code" and encountered this passage about his character, a wealthy eccentric and expert on the Holy Grail: "Portly and ruby-faced, Sir Leigh Teabing had bushy red hair and jovial hazel eyes that seemed to twinkle as he spoke."

The esteemed British actor has silvery hair and no "rotund belly," although he, too, carries the title of "Sir" before his name. "Ron Howard said it doesn't matter what Teabing looks like, and it doesn't," McKellen says, since author Dan Brown concentrates more on personality than physique.

However, one element remains and that is Teabing's reliance, due to childhood polio, on leg braces and crutches in the book or "sticks" or canes in the film.

"I use sticks, actually. He has to do a little bit too much to be stuck with crutches, up and down stairs in medieval buildings and so on. You'll see in the film, his house and his plane are adapted for someone who's disabled, so it all seems to be part of the story."

In a summer that's off to a slow start at the box office, McKellen may be the only player in a win-win position this May. "The Da Vinci Code" opens today, and next Friday will bring "X-Men: The Last Stand," returning McKellen as Magneto, a mutant who can control and manipulate metal. It's a good bet that he'll be in a No. 1 movie one or both weeks and perhaps beyond.

"I'm not in 'Superman,' you know. I'm not in 'Mission: Impossible III.' There are other movies around," he said, with a jovial laugh from Los Angeles, in between bites of his French toast breakfast.

He credits his double duty to chance and says he can't get over the fact that at this stage in his life, he is featured in films that "an awful lot of people want to see. It just happens that I'm in them, so I can't really take any credit for it."

McKellen, for instance, just happened to play the wizard Gandalf in the wildly popular "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

"I was brought up by my parents to believe there was a prime of life -- that's a phrase I haven't heard for a long time -- and not to expect everything all at once. This was before the Beatles taught us you could be young and famous and rich, so I never expected, really, to hit my stride till I was mid-40s or something like that."

Days away from his 67th birthday, a two-time Oscar nominee for "Gods and Monsters" and "LOTR," and one of the world's most respected Shakespearean actors, McKellen is as modest as a day player. Take his account of his first meeting with director Howard at a London hotel.

"He was probably going to troll through all of the usual suspects, actors of my generation and experience, there are quite a lot of us in London. If you don't get one, you can get the other. I think I was lucky to get in first. We got on very well. Ron is a very obliging chap, and having been an actor for such a long time himself, he's very sympathetic to actors, which not all directors are."

As for Howard's direction, McKellen says, "He did it extremely efficiently and very alert to what was needed to keep the story going in terms of action and excitement and speed and clarity, aided every step of the way by Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the screenplay and was with us for most of the shoot."

With roughly 50 million copies of "Da Vinci Code" in print, its twists are among the world's worst-kept secrets. Even those who tried to steer clear of the revelations may have stumbled across them while reading about the copyright trial or how churches are bracing for (or embracing) the film's release.

McKellen points to the groaning shelves of companion books, illustrated guides and historical texts and says, "It rather looks as if the public can't get enough of this particular story and will be happy to see it retold on the big screen. That's the theory, and I hope they're right. ...

"And the way Ron Howard has shot it, like a thriller, it's the cinematic equivalent of turning the pages. It races along, and I think the audience will get caught up in it, whether they think they know the story or not, and of course the visuals will be an added delight."

Although Newsweek raised a flag about the length -- 2 hours and 30 minutes, long for a summer release -- McKellen suggests a half-hour TV show can seem interminable, but a well-done movie can zip by (although anything more than three hours is worthy of worry, he concedes).

"It's quite a meaty movie, a meaty thriller," he says. "There is an intellectual excitement that goes on, people sit 'round tables talking to each other and debating and arguing and putting forward this and that explanation of historical events."

McKellen says suggestions that Leonardo Da Vinci sent signals about organized religion through his paintings are far-fetched. But he adds, "There are other things that were revelatory to me, like the existence of a variety of gospels presenting different versions of Christ's story on Earth, which may or may not have been censored and cut out of history for whatever reasons by the church."

This week, McKellen will have one foot in a world drawn on the "sacred feminine" and another in a world drawn from Marvel Comics. He planned a two-barreled dose of promotion for "Da Vinci Code" and "X-Men" at the Cannes Film Festival.

In "X-Men: The Last Stand," a cure for mutancy threatens to alter the course of history. Magneto tells his followers, "Nobody is going to cure us. We are the cure."

"That's always been part of what's been captivating about the comics for nigh on 30 years," he says, with its themes about being different, alienation and trying to fit in. They especially resonate with young people who are black, Jewish or gay.

"And there are people in this country who think you can cure people like me of being gay," he says with a soft laugh. "These films are about life as it is lived, amazing as it may seem with all the characters dressing up in fantastical costumes and doing unbelievably magical things. Deep down, at the heart of it, there is an emotional, actual connection between them and some of their audience."

The "X-Men" films aren't the only ones which have touched moviegoers, as demonstrated by the response to McKellen's Web site, which serves as electronic scrapbook, promotional machine, shopping center and mailbag.

People want to share their stories with him. "So, if I ever think, oh, acting isn't really a job for a grown-up, but it is. It's storytelling, and some stories are really important."

As for the summer movie McKellen is most anticipating, well, he has some catching up to do since he doesn't like to get distracted by other performances while he's working.

"I'm looking forward to seeing 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'Capote' and 'King Kong' and by the end of the year, of course, I'll be really rooting for Bill Condon's latest -- he directed 'Gods and Monsters' -- and he's written the screenplay and directed 'Dreamgirls,' an intensely theatrical story about the Supremes, I suppose. And he showed me 20 minutes of it the other night and, well, I can't wait for the whole thing."