Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
I spent 30 years of my life not being wanted at all for films.
I’m the happiest grandfather in the world, I promise you.
I think it would be great for the Academy to recognize old age.
If you’re a leading actor you don’t work with another actor. You work with a lady.
We should vote for the welfare of the country, not for the welfare of the party.
I don’t have any regrets because I’m very optimistic, and live each day as though it’s the last.
If you’re a gardener you don’t need a gym. You’re always carrying large sacks of manure all over.
In my day, the drug was alcohol and the weapon was a fist, so it was very sort of innocent and primitive. Now you’ve got drugs, guns, and knives, which are so lethal.
I’m hoping there’s an afterlife. As you get older, you hope even more fervently.
I’ve done a lot of radio in my life so I am absolutely used of working with the voice. I have a very distinctive voice so it’s always great for me because I open my mouth and everybody knows who it is.
I have enough money not to do pictures ever. I’m seventy years old. I don’t want to get up at 6:30 in the morning and learn ten pages of dialogue to do with a bunch of creeps I don’t like. It’s gotta be fun for me.
I have a knack of making villainous people a little bit sympathetic, a bit of fun on screen.
I don’t want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you’ve ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.
I’m very, very family oriented. I’m a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now.
I can’t really act – I’m just trying to make as much money as I can before anyone finds out.
I don’t want to screw up today’s work and tomorrow’s worrying about yesterday’s and I don’t want to focus on what it looks like on the outside when the performance has to come from within me. I want to be in the moment now, getting it right from the inside.
Isaacs, the man who used to sell Dad his jellied.
When you are prepared, you are able to subdue your fear, control your nerves, channel your energy, and enter that state of highly alert relaxation that is spontaneity’s best friend.
I do like to laugh. I remember Roger Moore, years ago, saying to me “Cheer up. You’d better have a good time because this is not a rehearsal, this is life. This is the show.
Age to me is in the mind. I’ve seen 70-year-olds who are already dead and 90-year-olds who can’t stop themselves living. I stay young by refusing to be old.