I'm thrilled to be around still, and I don't want to blow my horn, but I've done so many more parts than Barrymore ever got a chance to do. That Barrymore wasn't able - or willing to show his true range is one of the great missed opportunities of the theatrical stage. A terrible waste.
I'm bored with questions about acting.
I don't know why I turned it down. I think it had to do with spending four years in New Zealand. There's other countries I want to visit before I croak. But Ian McKellen got the role and he was fantastic in it. He played the role really warm and kind and I hate the son-of-a-bitch!
The first time my father saw me in the flesh was on the stage, which is a bit weird. We went out to dinner, and he was charming and sweet, but I did all the talking.
Hamlet can sound self-pitying. He's always whining, something being rotten in Denmark and the world so awful. To get over that, Michael suggested that because Hamlet himself had a large intellect, that he turned those complaining moments into a kind of wonderment and would analyze everything as a fresh discovery. It was a superb way of getting rid of the danger of self-pity, and an astounding piece of direction because it was valuable throughout the play.
The part of Mike Wallace drew me to the movie because I thought, what an outrageous part to play.
When I did "Henry V", he changed my life. Really owe my career to Michael.
In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.
Yeah, it drives me nuts. It has nothing to do with the movie, it's just a relentless pursuing of this film that goes on and on and I've gone on and on, far above and beyond it and then to be reminded of it, God almighty what is the matter with people?
I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.
Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I'm determined to keep crackin'.
Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.
People were unnaturally sentimental about the film. So I always gave it a tough time. But a few years ago, I went to an Easter party and had to watch the damn thing with these kids. I was a prisoner! And then I thought, it's got everything - the lovely songs, the Nazis and the nuns and the kids. It's timeless and I'm grateful for it.
I couldn't believe when I first got a fan letter from Al Pacino, it was unreal.
I just can't tell you what fun I've had being a member of the world's second oldest profession. When they honor you, it's like being lit by the holy grail.
Here is Mike Wallace, who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early '50s. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too.
Very few people have it naturally - Chaplin, Brando. It's a gift. But you can learn how to fake it.
Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.
Ewan McGregor doesn't act, he inhabits a role. And, of course, he makes you not act and inhabit the role, like it's a competition. I owe that to him.
It is a culture voice, but it is a very American culture voice, and I am very used to English culture voice. So I had to work like hell to flatten those R's.
As T.S. Eliot measures his life with coffee spoons, so I measure mine by the plays I've been in. I'm too vague to measure any other way. The theatre is not for sissies. It separates the men from the boys.
I would happily share this award with Ewan McGregor if I had any decency but I don't.
I would rather not know about how one gets parts in movies these days.
You're only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?
[on cell-phones ringing during a live performance] The only thing to do is to say something like "I'll get it." The audience gives you applause because they hate it too.
Unless you can surround yourself with as many beautiful things as you can afford, I don`t think life has very much meaning.
I think many of today's politicians take a typical CEO mentality when it comes to the arts. It's anathema to them. It's the last thing they think of when it comes to funding; it's way down at the bottom of the list. That is unconscionable. It's so stupid and narrow-minded. They don't realize. It's all about political manoeuvring.
I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.
Television is certainly more skilfully handled now than it was then. There are certain things, like Sherlock, which is enchanting and perfectly right for a younger audience. And the truly wonderful thing about it is that it is not disloyal to the original. There's a Conan Doyle feeling about it - something that Doyle would have written for this age. Benedict Cumberbatch is a superb actor. I love his beats. Those are rare things that happen marvelously in this medium.
Watching the Sound of Music is like being beaten to death with a Hallmark card.
He had a lot to do with making it dangerous. He understood media. He understood how you could break down a person in front of a camera. It's a cruel medium. You have to deal with it skillfully. He was not a horrid man. I met him. He was very likable and very bright. But he knew it was a cruel medium and that it was an instant medium. It's now; it's in the moment. You can't rehearse it; you can't be glib. That's really what television is about. It's about what's happening in the streets, all the awful wars, all the awful things that are happening.
They realized I was alive again, even though I was playing an old, dying sop.
The writing was superior. But then we had all the best writers, Horton Foote and others, writing for this brash new medium. It was as exciting as hell. It was an adventure. Television has become a little glossy. A little too comfortable.
The devil is more interesting than God.
I was much a part of live television in the '50s. There was something terribly honest about live television and terribly dangerous and terribly risky. You were bound to learn your lines without bumping into each other, which we did a lot of.
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