If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says.
When I work with young people, I grab energy from them by the handsful.
It's my job, it's what I do, it's what I'm on earth to do and it's who I am.
I'm the most gregarious of men and love good company, but never less alone when alone.
I can't tell you about acting. You can develop all the skills, voice, gesture, movement, you can develop by exercise and practice but finally fundamentally it's mining from yourself, from your own personality, from what you know. If you can't know it you can have a good guess by people you know or books you've read.
We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting, Pete, this is the beginning of a great adventure.
Being sober for so many years is getting interesting.
I'm a professional and I'll do anything - a poetry reading, television, cinema, anything that allows me to act.
I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.
The only thing I've ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket.
It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.
My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.
I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line.
What I like is bottomless flattery.
My dear sir, it haunted me for the rest of my life.
I am human, all too bloody human.
If man ever comes to perfect equilibrium with the environment, we'll all be redundant, perhaps because you won't need art or letters.
No one can take Jesus away from me.... There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.
Acting has been described as farting about in disguise.
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
The moment you start dividing thought and feeling, the ratio of sinitive from the intuitive, you're dead. There is no difference between emotion and thought. You can be unreasonable.
I'm a very physical actor. I use everything - toes, teeth, ears, everything. I don't simply mean physical in the sense of movement and vigour. I find myself remembering the shape of a scene by how I'm standing, what I'm doing.
Life turned out much better than I thought. I knew after a little while that I could act.
Most difficult thing in the world, to write a play. Do you know the story of Shaw at the Fabian society? H.G. Welles said "I'm terribly sorry I've missed the last five meetings, I've been terribly busy, I'm engaged in writing a scientific pamphlet on the effects of radioactivity in 1984 and I've produced a novel, and various pieces of science fiction to do, and I've had a bit of personal trouble, and I had my copy to bring out for the newspaper." Shaw leapt up and said, "I've not missed one meeting, and I have written a play!" hardest thing in the world. If it were easy they'd all be at it.
He's a scoundrel, young Brad Pitt, who led me, his elderly colleague, astray more than once.
