As this article notes, the next addition to the cast of Coronation Street, Britain’s longest running soap opera, is Sir Ian McKellen. He says:

For my next job I shall realise a long-held ambition – to appear in Coronation Street. On 29 March I go to the Granada Studios in Manchester and team up with the regulars for 10 episodes as Mel Hutchwright, a dodgy novelist invited to meet the local reading group. More I shouldn’t reveal, except that the script is hilarious and well up to the Street’s current high standards as UK’s most popular television programme.

He had already turned down an offer to appear on the soap some 15 years earlier.

He is not the first actor more known for their films to appear in British soap – recently Patsy Kensit has taken a role in Emmerdale.