Films were never in my budget. Didn't occur to me till much later. I hoped for a long, good life, which I've had and I'm having as an actor. I didn't expect the rest.
I have unqualified admiration for Brad Pitt.
A rubber neck is a necessary part of equipment.
Omar Sharif and I spent nine months in the desert, day after day for nine months.
I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, 'He needs someone to bowl to him.'
I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you.
I tell my children to avoid theatre and go into cinema and TV.
No one can take Jesus away from me. There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.
No one ever watched competitive swimming.
I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick.
It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.
My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.
I have my very own Oscar now to be with me until death us do part.
It's very inconvenient because every time I finish, let's say, a chapter of a book, I think I'm going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I've buried him. I buried him last year.
I can now tell from the envelope whether or not it is a good script.
I can make the best French toast.
There's always a hunger, when you're young, to go from peak to peak and avoid the valleys.
Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world.
Every three or four years, I'm hot again.
I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.
If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it.
My plumbing is no one's business but my own.
Where do I begin? I loved working with Kate Hepburn, which was one of the highlights of my life; Working with Richard Burton in Beckett was another great joy.
A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'
I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions.
I wouldn't mind being a lord.
There is a legend. And to protest is daft.
The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead.
We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.
Right after I left drama school, I had a job.
It's my job, it's what I do, it's what I'm on earth to do and it's who I am.
People talk about the '60s, but they were merely a mass production of what the '50s had begun.
No one should ever know where conduct ends and acting begins. Conduct unbecoming. That's what acting is.
I can't stand light. I hate weather.
I've played farce on the stage, but I have never played any sort of comedy on the screen.
Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.
Public crucifixion is no fun.
I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.
I was apprehensive about bringing off this Homer.
When I'm doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I'm doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.
There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.
For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding.
I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums.
I've never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps.
I had a pretty hilariously gloomy few years in the '70s.
Life turned out much better than I thought. I knew after a little while that I could act.
I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star.
I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions.
Money is always a pressure.
