Call me Sir if you like! Maybe people in America think being a Sir is a big deal. But I think we should all be misters together. I think the Sir thing slightly perpetuates one of our diseases in England, which is snobbery. And it also helps keep us `quaint,` which I`m not a great fan of. You don`t get much with the title anymore. That was all carved up by the robber barons in the Middle Ages.

I like playing accents, and doing things like that, it was fun. It was fun.

No, no, I go where the work is, wherever it is. I`ll go, I mean, if I select it, but I don`t try and ration it out or balance it at all.

He`d just run, run all the time, and he walks about, doesn`t he, he never stops. I think that they put an odometer on him one day and he walked miles.

You can`t when you`re filing, you`re just busy, but I didn`t see... I used to come home and my girl would make me dinner and it was lovely.

They have to exist or not in their own right. I mean, with kids, you don`t say, `Which is your favourite,` or `Which did you enjoy bringing up the best?`

On The Waterfront came out and there were 150 guys [at RADA] all doing Brando impressions.

My girlfriend and I rented a nice house on the river and I was there for about two and a half months, and we were just out of Alabama. I hardly got to see Alabama.

I`m not bothered by the paparazzi and I don`t feel hemmed in, I`ve never felt that. My youth, mind you, there wasn`t quite the same attention to celebrities as there is now, but I`ve never felt that.

I don`t think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we`re someone else. I don`t tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

After I played a homosexual character in `A Man of No Importance,` an American journalist asked if I`d have a rainbow flag on my car`s bumper. I said I don`t `do` bumper stickers, but if I did, I`d be pleased to use that one. After all, everyone`s included in the rainbow, aren`t they?

My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry.

I`m doing another Churchill. I did a Churchill for HBO and that was up to 1939 and there`s talk of the war years. They were going to do it this fall, but the script wasn`t going to be ready.

[on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)] "I was the first man to be seen sleeping with another man`s wife in an English film."

[1967 comment on director Karel Reisz] I think Karel is very good with actors; he`s very interested in the actors creating a character and not just relying on personality, he`s good at encouraging actors to explore the characterization, and I think that`s the kind of acting I`m interested in.

She goes on the set with headphones and gives you notes. She`s terrific and I always run to her now, because she is just great to work with, as well as very good at different accents.

That is one of the reasons one enjoys acting. Now and again, you get scenes where you work with somebody really good and you have a good time trying to make it really work and really work well.

I don`t really look back at all. When I`ve made a film, I`ve made it. They kind of go out into the world and they`re on their own really.

I`m not the romantic type ... I`m a bit like the late, great Peter Sellers, only happy in character roles.

He just lets you go, really. When we were kind of supposed to rehearse, I don`t remember rehearsing at all. We just sort of gossiped and chatted.

I haven`t seen the film yet because I just got in from London. In the scenes where the two characters are bantering with each other, it is like bobbing at the net in tennis.

All we did in Alabama was have a read through with the script, but there was, `No, well, it needs more. You`ve got to do this, Albert. You`ve got to do that, Jessica.` It didn`t feel like that at all.

She is up there with the best of them. I can only talk about my experience, but it was genuinely special.

I was in London. It`s a long way to go for a very long party, sitting there for six hours not having a cigarette or a drink. It`s a waste of time.

I mean, I did a film, a musical of `Scrooge`, in `70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don`t have to turn up at all.

You are with a new set of people, you are in a new location, there is always something new about it. I still enjoy that. It`s still good fun.

You offer things up, I suppose, and he probably gently maybe changes it a little bit one way or another, but you don`t feel directive as it were.

Well, I`ve always thought that my career was in England, really. I used to do more in the theatre, and I felt that I should be there. It`s not far is it? It`s amazing the way that special FX have taken a quantum leap in what they`re capable of doing.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory`s vault and mix in a sad memory from one`s own life.

Within two weeks of working with her, I realized how good she was for the role because she was absolutely with it and she has got terrific instincts, I think, as an artist, too.

You`re less likely to get the part, many parts, if you`re playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around.

[speaking in 1961] "My job is acting, and that is why I hate interviews or lectures, explaining myself to an audience."

I just felt I was being used. I wasn`t involved ... I felt bored most of the time. - On Tom Jones (1963)

There might`ve been wires, but I have this ability to make myself light. Well you know what, in ballet, when you kind of lift yourself here, it`s all up in the head.

We meet before the movie and she gives you charts with sounds on them and makes a tape of examples. While they are setting up the scene, I go with her to the trailer and we go through the scene and correct the speech.

We`re given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there`s a group of people all ready to make a film and it`s a marvelous life.

It`s a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we`ve had. We`re very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don`t sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, `How do I start? Where do I start?`

I don`t plan on digging that stuff up that I`ve kept down with my feet. Why would I want to dig it all up and examine it like an archaeologist?

[1987 comment on John Huston] I kinda loved John. He was like a second father to me in many ways, which I know may sound odd considering I was 45 when I first worked with him, but when you had to say goodbye there was always this feeling of loss, that terrible sadness that you`d be deprived of his company. I`ve seen more films by him than anybody else on the planet.

[on Charles Laughton] He was the first kind of legend I actually had contact with professionally, which was very exciting. I admired him in his movies; I`d never seen him on the stage. I thought he was terrific.

You just feel comfortable with him, and he certainly makes sure that you`re comfortable. He makes sure that you feel good and that you`re happy with what you`re doing.

I don`t enter, I`m entered. It`s up to someone else. It`s up to them.

You come on as a guest. You don`t get the girl anymore. But that is our lives. You start off as the boyfriend, then you are the lover, then you are the husband, then you are the father, and then you are the grandfather.

I think that one of Tim`s great qualities and abilities is in what seems like a thumbnail sketch to get something quite telling, very simply, when you`re doing it or being in that thumbnail sketch, you don`t feel that it`s important.

It was great to do and it`s exciting to do those things. That`s another thing, that one enjoys the game.

When I read the script, I liked the script very much and I thought it was a marvelous part for her, because I think it is a change of pace. I mean, we know how wonderful she is in romantic comedy.

I think that I`m busy in the present, and I don`t want to go back. Well, there`s been an unauthorized biography, and you can`t stop them. It didn`t worry me.

He tells you stories, but then, after a while, when you want more, he doesn`t give you more. He insists on this old elaboration, the old stories that never changes.

No, she is right up there with the best I`ve worked with. I was very impressed with her, I really was.