Quote:
Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar
Both Ians, McKellen and Holm, have been knighted. And yes, I'm quite sure that being British is a prerequisite.
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No it isn't - citizens of commonwealth countries receive Knighthoods and Damehoods if their own governments permit them (New Zealand has recently rescinded its rules preventing this so theoretically Peter Jackson could be knighted). Non-british or Commonwealth citizens may receive what is commonly called an "honorary knighthood" - for example Bill Gates, Placido Domingo, Rudi Giuliani, Presidents Reagan, Bush Senior and Mitterand, Chancellor Kohl, Bob Geldof. The holders may use the apropriate initials for their order after their name (eg KBE) but are not dubed and may not call themself Sir /Dame X. An exception is Tony O'Reilly who holds dual British Irish nationality and who has permission from the Irish Government and those foreign citizens who subsequently take out British Nationality (eg the late JP Getty and Yehudi Menuhin).
Unless you are an politician of international Statesman level you usually have to do a serious amount of good work for charity - being very sucessful at music or computers is not enough! The only foreign film director to be given a knighthood is Spielberg...
Of course other countries have order of chivalry - it isn't exclusively British. I worked for someone who was a knight of a Maltese catholic order of chivalry.
It is rather early to say with much confidence which of the other LOTR actors might be honoured. Most are still rather young and some actors decline honours on political or other principal. If this is not the case then I imagine Sean Bean might well be a possibility. Cate Blanchett in my opinion is certainly of the calibre of our current crop of bedamed actresses but as an Australian republican she might well refuse.