I’ve always got to have one impossible dream on the back burner.
If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.
I learn the whole time. I think it would be dull if I thought I was going to work and wouldn’t find something new. We always learn.
A man should dress in a way that you don’t notice. He looks good and you don’t know why. But it’s the tailoring, the materials, and the clothes.
You’ve got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.
Acting is not a competition; everything must be done for the good of the film or else everybody loses.
My view is that you should always remake failures because then you’ve got nowhere to go but up.
Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser.
I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn’t.
You start pretending to have fun, you might have a little by accident.
First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.
You’re your first best audience, long before anybody else hears you. So don’t be an easy audience. Keep asking for more.
English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.
What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor’s life, because it’s so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write; and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you’ve got to do some writing.
Save your money. You’re going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.
I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.
I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don’t want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.
I don’t have to work, really, but I do enjoy working, and I do enjoy getting paid.
I never regret anything. I always said that when I’m old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn’t do; and now I’m old, and I don’t regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I’m still having it.