Quotes

There are too many prima donnas in this business and not enough action.

I'm not interested in reputation or immortality or things like that . . . I don't care what I'm remembered for. I don't care if I'm remembered. I don't care if I'm not remembered. I don't care why I'm remembered. I genuinely don't care.

No one gave me anything. I fought TB, I fought the devil. But I made people laugh. I don't want immortality. I've lived it all. I've done it all.

No one trusts me any more. I spent half the movie [Maigret (1988)] arguing with people and I was accused of causing big on-set rows. But what they won't tell you is I fought for [author Georges Simenon]. I fought for the maintenance of quality. I don't believe in lying down on the job. I've seen these so-called "nice" actors. Very able fellows like Ian McKellen and Kenneth Branagh. But they're like bank managers. So sweet and careful. Who needs them? We are suffering a plague of good taste. Give me Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke any day. They project danger. That's what makes acting--and life--interesting.

[his response to hearing he had been Oscar nominated for This Sporting Life (1963)] I've struck a blow for the Irish rebellion!

I would give up all the accolades--people have occasionally written and said nice things--of my showbiz career to play just once for the senior Munster team. I will never win an Oscar now, but even if I did I would swap it instantly for one sip of champagne from the Heineken Cup.

Someone asked me once "What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?" I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water. That's the difference--a bottle of Evian water.

What I hate about our business today is the elitism. So-called stars ride in private jets and have bodyguards and dietitians and beauticians. Tom Cruise is a midget and he has eight bodyguards all 6'10", which makes him even more diminutive. It's an absolute joke.

I can see the difficulties of making a movie. Directors and producers have to put up with a lot of rubbish from temperamental actors.

[on his Major Dundee (1965) co-star Charlton Heston'] Heston's the only man who could drop out of a cubic moon, he's so square. The trouble with him is he doesn't think he's a hired actor, like the rest of us. He thinks he's the entire production. He used to sit there in the mornings and clock us with a stopwatch.

[upon being carried out on a stretcher from the Savoy Hotel, to people entering the hotel] It was the food!

I was a sinner. I slugged some people. I hurt many people. And it's true, I never looked back to see the casualties.

[on playing Professor Dumbledore] I'll keep doing it as long as I enjoy it, my health holds out and they still want me. But the chances of all three of those factors remaining constant are pretty slim.

I feel most alive when I'm working on a film.

I hate movies. They're a waste of time. I could be in a pub having more fun talking to idiots rather than sitting down and watching idiots perform.

I consider a great part of my career a total failure. I went after the wrong things--got caught in the '60s. I picked pictures that were way below my talent. Just to have fun.

[in 2000] I made films I did not want to see, I took planes to places I didn't want to visit, I bought houses I didn't live in. I was numb, and it didn't seem to matter.

Actors take themselves so seriously. Samuel Beckett is important, James Joyce is--they left something behind them. But even Laurence Olivier is totally unimportant. Acting is actually very simple, but actors try to elevate it to an art.

If ever I was miscast in my life, it was in the role of husband. I was the worst husband in the world.

When I'm in trouble, I'm an Irishman. When I turn in a good performance, I'm an Englishman.

[on his life] I wish I could remember it.

[on turning 70] I can be eccentric now and get away with it.

I have no friends in this business. I don't go to their clubs, don't go to their hangouts and don't mix at all. I am part of the business but I am apart from it. If anyone ever asks my advice, I tell them, "Don't take yourself too seriously".

When I worked with Julie Andrews, I think I experienced the greatest hate I ever had for any human being.

I came to England first in 1954 looking for a bedsit, a room to sleep in while going to my academy. And outside the Earl's Court tube station there was a little tobacco-list and paper shop and they had a board. A glass-filled in board with rooms for rent. And I saw one for 13 shillings a week and it said, "No Irishmen or black need apply" and I took my jersey and I put it down over my hand and I put my hand right through the glass and I took it out and I kept it for the rest of my life. That's how we were treated here in 1954. That would cause me grievance. That would cause me anger.

Jesus is just a word I use to swear with.

People may look at Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton and me and say we never fulfilled our talent. But I laugh at that, and say to anyone with that view that I didn't fulfil their idea of my talent. I didn't fulfil the dreams that they had for me.

Any suggestion that [Michael Caine] Has eclipsed the names of Finney, O'Toole, Burton, Bates, Smith and Courtenay is tantamount to prophesying that Rin-Tin-Tin will be solemnised beyond the memory of Brando.

[asked if he ever read the Harry Potter books] I haven't, even today I haven't read them. Not because they're not grand, I know they're great. I love the script, but I don't read fiction, it's as simple as that. There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.

[on Tom Cruise] He's got very nice teeth, but has he ever read a book?

[on Michael Caine] He is an over-fat flatulent 62-year-old windbag, a master of inconsequence now masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues.

[on Michael Caine's comments about being underappreciated in his own country] He takes himself too seriously. I've made 63 movies and I've never been nominated by BAFTA for anything. Do I care? Not in the slightest.

[about Michael Caine comparing himself to Gene Hackman] Hackman is an intimidating and dangerous actor. Mr. Caine is about as dangerous as Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy, or indeed both, and as intimidating as Shirley Temple.

[on Michael Caine receiving his honorary BAFTA] Good luck to him with his BAFTA mask. I hope he does us all a favor and wears the bloody thing in front of his face wherever he goes.

[having been called a drunk by Michael Caine] The point about Michael is that he can say what he likes, I don't mind him opening his mouth and shooting off. I don't care what he says. But don't characterize Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and me as drunks as if that's all we achieved in our life, because he could live 20 fucking lives and he couldn't achieve as much as we three have achieved.

(On Charlton Heston) He'd played in Shakespeare and to listen to him, you'd think he helped the Bard with the rewrites. He was a prick, really, and I liked tackling pricks.

There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.

I never got to know my parents and they never got to know me.

Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little.

I never pick fights. People pick fights with me.

Marriage is a custom brought about by women who then proceed to live off men and destroy them, completely enveloping the man in a destructive cocoon or eating him away like a poisonous fungus on a tree.

I was a rude, bombastic, opinionated, beautifully ignorant when I got drunk.

I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have.

Many kids turn to selling drugs. It's not a good career choice, but they see it as a way to get money.

[on agreeing to the 'Harry Potter' film series]: The idea of doing seven films was intimidating. I would have to get permission to do something else and I'm rebellious by nature. I felt it could be rather difficult to handle.

[on being offered the Dumbledore role in 'Harry Potter']: I knew is that they kept offering me the part and raising the salary every time they called. I kept turning it down. Anyone involved has to agree to be in the sequels, all of them, and that's not how I wanted to spend the last years of my life, so I said no over and over again.

[on his granddaughter Ella encouraging him to take the Dumbledore role]: She said, 'Papa, I hear you're not going to be in the Harry Potter movie,' and she said, 'If you don't play Dumbledore, then I will never speak to you again'.