There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.
— Peter O'Toole
I'm not a French singer.
Public crucifixion is no fun.
An Oscar is a symbol that is known in every corner of the world.
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.
No one ever watched competitive swimming.
It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.
In my day England, Scotland, Wales had 80 drama schools. There are none left. So there's no training, no discipline.
I've never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps.
My dad went at 86. A car killed him. He was crossing the road.
I love London.
Every three or four years, I'm hot again.
I have unqualified admiration for Brad Pitt.
I have my very own Oscar now to be with me until death us do part.
If you can't do something willingly and joyfully, then don't do it.
My father was a racetrack bookie.
I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can't be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one's lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically.
Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.
I had a pretty hilariously gloomy few years in the '70s.
A rubber neck is a necessary part of equipment.
A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'
I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions.
I never found it easy to learn my lines. It was slog, slog, slog.
Omar Sharif and I spent nine months in the desert, day after day for nine months.
Right after I left drama school, I had a job.
I quite like being old.
No one should ever know where conduct ends and acting begins. Conduct unbecoming. That's what acting is.
When I'm doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I'm doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.
People talk about the '60s, but they were merely a mass production of what the '50s had begun.
If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
Money is always a pressure.
I can now tell from the envelope whether or not it is a good script.
My plumbing is no one's business but my own.
I love working with the young.
I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star.
There's always a hunger, when you're young, to go from peak to peak and avoid the valleys.
It's a razor's edge, a romance with an old man and a young woman.
You know when you've found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.
I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, 'He needs someone to bowl to him.'
All the minor sports injuries you acquire over the years begin to multiply like flies when you get over 70.
Actors have given up their clout. Now decision making is in the hands of lighting men, designers, bankers, special-effects people. We need to cut that out and just go with the most able trained actors in the business.
I'm Irish. That means I'm Catholic. But, truth is, now I'm a retired Christian.
My favorite food from my homeland is Guinness. My second choice in Guinness. My third choice - would have to be Guinness.
Acting is just being a man. Being human. Not forcing it.
I've done everything that's possible to be done.
I saw a man killed in front of my eyes just before my eighth birthday.
I've played farce on the stage, but I have never played any sort of comedy on the screen.
I take whatever good part comes along.
I know nothing at all about women. They are an amazing, beautiful mystery.
I'm not from the working class. I'm from the criminal class.
