- I've done some stinkers in the cinema. You can't regret it; there are always reasons for doing something, even if it's just the location.
- We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.
- People like us, who turn ourselves inside out for a living, we get into an emotional tussle rather than a marriage. It's fire I'm playing with and it isn't surprising I'm not the ideal companion on a daily basis. But it takes two. I mean, Christ, I haven't forced anybody.
- St Michael's was one of those very rarefied, very Anglo-Catholic establishments where they rejoiced in more religious paraphernalia and theatricality than the entire Vatican. More incense-swinging, more crucifixes, more gold tassels, more rose petals, more holy mothers, more God knows what. Three times a day they played the Angelus. When you heard it, you had to stop whatever you were doing, do the Hail Marys in your head, and then return to what you were doing. Like it would come in the middle of a Latin class. I'm just conjugating the love verb, amo, amas, amat, and doingggg! you have to stand up, go through the whole Angelus, mother-of-God thing and then crack on with amamus, amatis, amant. Sir! Because, if you didn't, Whack! Cane. Belt. Education by fear. And the really funny thing was they wouldn't tolerate bullying between peers. Prefects could bash you with a slipper, but you weren't allowed to give each other a rough time. Like who do you think you are? You haven't yet earned the privilege of being violent.
- My parents' lot had literally crawled away from the second world war, taking with them two vital commodities by way of a survival mechanism: respectability and security. It was odd, coming from a Christian household, but the big thing was about not being what they called "common". I got all that, "Don't play with him, he's common". I had a friend called Grenville Barker who'd come round sometimes and play football on the lawn, but not very often. And I wasn't allowed to go to his home very often because they were working class. He was what my mother called a bad influence. Everything had to do with influence. My mother was desperate I should be properly influenced, have a proper, received accent, be sent away to school at eight. So all you can do is go into yourself, immerse yourself in your own life.
- I couldn't possibly do that. To be able to understand being five years old and write as if you were that age through the book till you get to that extraordinary flowery-pretentious age of the 18-/19-year-old. It's so complicated when you're dealing with memory because of the perspective and how it keeps changing. You have to learn how you see things. It's about...lordy-me, I've forgotten the word. This time in the morning. Never mind, come to me in a moment, let's have more coffee...conditioning.
- There is no such thing as all good people and all bad people. We're all capable. It exists within us. In war-time, as we're finding out now, things that have been on camera, our wonderful troops, who we felt were absolutely impeccable, were as guilty as everybody else of. If you're given license to kill, it's going to release many an evil.
- Someone once asked me, "Is there anything you regret?" and I said, "Everything!" Whatever you do, there was always a better choice.
- I've always felt, and I think I'm qualified to say so because I've won a few awards, that it's a terrible shame to put something in competition with something else to be able to sell something. Confronted with films like Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Capote (2005) and the Johnny Cash movie (Walk the Line (2005)), you can't pit one against the other. Films are not made to be competitive in that sense.
- "If" and "only" are the two words in the English language that should never be put together.
- You know, I've never guided my life. I've just been whipped along by the waves I'm sitting in. I don't make plans at all. Plans are what make God laugh. You can make plans, you can make so many plans, but they never go right, do they?
- Also, the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realize that it is going to come to an end at some stage.
- I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.
- I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the filmmakers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
- [on David Niven] Now if I could be David Niven, I'd be content. He knows how to live life. He's charming, he's amusing, he's so up. An up man! I'm sure he's also complicated, but he never lays it on you.
- I remember talking to Olivier when we were doing Lear. He said: 'When it comes to your obituary they will only mention two or three performances, and they will be the ones that defined you early on.' I said: 'What will they write about you?' 'Richard III and Wuthering Heights,' he replied. And he was right.
- I have done all sorts of extraordinary things, I know. At the time I didn't think anything of it. But when you look back you think, 'Jesus Christ!' [Would I live it again?] No thank you. I'm with Beckett there. It's not good enough to die. One has to be forgotten.
- On his drinking: "I wasn't like Oliver Reed. He was a competitive drinker. He'd say, 'I can drink you under the fucking table.' And I'd say: 'I'm sure you could, Oliver. But where's the fun in that?' "
- Oh God, yes, there are moments where you say, 'Wouldn't it have been nice?' Look at Daniel Day-Lewis, he's handled himself very well. He keeps retiring. I wish I'd thought of that! No, I know Danny well, and he's very amusing. But he certainly has a very cute understanding of the game. And he's got them eating out of his hand.
- On playing gay characters: "It's a big deal for some actors, and for some people. But I understand it. I was away at school, you know?"
- On making Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008): "I don't suppose we could talk about the lack of enjoyment in making it?"
|
Movie/TV title: