Some jokes are just too good and too obvious to resist.</p>
<p>When Oscar-nominated British actor Sir Ian McKellen who is probably best known in America for playing the super-powered mutant Magneto in the X-Men movies spent Tuesday morning touring the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Innovation Park, the Magneto quips came fast and early.</p>
<p>Its a lot cheaper (to pay $3,000 an hour to run the magnet) than to get Ian to do it, Nobel Prize-winning chemist and Florida State faculty member Sir Harry Kroto quipped. Of course, Ian could just put his finger in there to get it to work. You dont need all this when youre Magneto.</p>
<p>Yes, all of this is redundant, McKellen said before he stopped briefly to hold up his hands as if putting a Magneto-style whammy on one of the magnet operators.</p>
<p>McKellen, who has been friends with Kroto since they were teens at school together in England during the 50s, was in town to visit Krotos high-tech playground as well as talk to theater students at FSU.</p>
<p>At this point in my life, Im interested in teaching and giving back, McKellen, 70, said. And Harry is all about recruiting people to teach. So Im really here for Harry.</p>
<p>McKellen is a classically trained stage actor with a lengthy list of film credits that includes Gods and Monsters (1998), Richard III (1995) and the role of Gandalf in the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy.</p>
<p>When asked what he was going to talk about with the student actors at FSU, McKellen said: Ill probably talk about camera acting, technique, what an actors life should be like. Who knows, maybe theyll want me to gossip about some of names Ive worked with. Its up to them.