Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.
The radio even weren’t allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.
Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed – I’m talking about England, incidentally.
The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you’re going for a job and you don’t get it.
And there was a very famous man called Michael Powell, who probably is the greatest director all round, except possibly a couple of men.
The strange thing about the English character is that they understate everything. It’s considered bad form to comment on the food, money, romance, any of those things. So you underplay it.
So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.
I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.
I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn’t that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.
I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I’ve ever seen on the movies.
I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you’re an actor, you know, don’t really need to learn how to do it.
Television has some lovely aspects to it – and some ghastly aspects – but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.
I was producing a series about Sir Winston Churchill, about which I was extremely proud, and earning a lot of money as a producer.
Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn’t it? I haven’t really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I’ve done is to have lived this long – 81.