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Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why...
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I knew I finally made it as a performer when I began hearing rumors that I was gay.
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Movies are always in a state of locomotion. You start with a general idea of how it should feel and then you find you've got a runaway train. You have to race to catch up: the movie is telling you what it wants to become, and when that happens there's no greater feeling.
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In terms of the stars, the only ones I cast were Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. I was in Los Angeles working and a lot of this took place on the telephone. I'd met Maggie Smith once and I'd come back-stage, which I'm usually loathe to do because as an actor you don't want people coming back because you want to get home.
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So, they had this 40-odd year friendship with each other and with Mr Harwood. So, when I came on it Albert, Tom and Maggie were in the cast. But then Albert wasn't up for it, so he had to withdraw.
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I came in on this movie after there had been a director and I came in after Tom Courtenay had talked to Ron Harwood about making a movie. So, you know Tom and Albert Finney had been friends since the beginning of their career as they became stars around the same time - Tom always reminds me that Albert was first with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and then Tom with The Long Distance Runner.
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My wife always says that I will be stuck with this forever: I am the difficult one. With Jack Nicholson they always said it was drugs. Warren Beatty is supposed to have screwed everything that jumped off the curve. I'll tell you, in reality a few of us had as many girls as Warren.
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I'm sixty-eight, I cry every chance I can.
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Life is an occasion...rise to it.
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People like Johnny Depp are an exception. He is the current model of what an actor should be. His body of work speaks volumes. He was so under-rated for so long, but he will have longevity - and it is such a gratifying thrill to see he is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
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It isn’t a big jump in the imagination to see yourself living alone like Mr Hoppy.
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Now, I'm simply working with people I want to work with. I just want to have good working experiences and let the dice fall where they may.
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If you can get out there and say I'm going to...I'm willing to fail at what I feel is right, that's it.
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Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.
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I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft.
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I don't like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I'm aging so well.
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Peter Pan, prepare to meet thy doom.
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Next to that kid, we all look like onions.
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God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers.
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We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.
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Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately.
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I knew that we had an obligation and that was to keep an energy in it and try to keep the audience interested. In fact, I asked some of the actors to take a look at His Girl Friday, a Howard Hawks film with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, because they talk over each other and there's a great energy.
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Lightbulbs die, my sweet. I will depart.
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So, most of it was done over the phone. But one of the first things I did as a director, because it's one of the first things you should do, even though most don't, is to ask good actors who they think is right for the part. They know better than anybody. But without missing a beat Maggie said Pauline Collins. I didn't know Pauline because I hadn't seen Shirley Valentine, but then I saw this thing that she did with Woody Allen "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger", in which she was wonderful as a psychic, and I said to her on the phone: "The dialogue seemed improvised."