I don’t worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you’ll go insane.
I won an Academy Award for ‘The Cider House Rules,’ playing an American.
Am I a car aficionado? No: for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn’t even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15.
For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.
You can see all sorts of things in film acting if you know where to look and what to look for. One thing I often notice is that the actor is looking for his mark, the place where he has to stand to be in the right place in the shot.
I don’t do it often, but I do cry. I also laugh a lot; people tell me I’m funny and I do like to laugh.
I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.
If you’re a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you’re a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.
You don’t retire from the movies. The movies retire you.
When I look in the mirror, I see someone who’s happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I’ve had success as I’ve gotten older, because I’m able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.
I usually control the environment I’m in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.
I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.
In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
The first thing I’ll do if I want to look really crappy is, I don’t wear any makeup at all.
To me, ‘Educating Rita’ is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.
No English director would’ve cast me as an officer, I promise you. Not one.
At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I’m Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.
But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.
My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O’Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.
I’m not tough anymore, I’m 82.