I think Michael Crawford realised, I think we all realised, once we'd gone the route of casting a very young girl, you can't really cast a 65 year old man opposite. Slightly different resonance I think. No, we weren't going to go there. We'd have Jack Nicholson in the lead.

I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.

I think that the wonderful advantage we have in the film of being able to cast a girl as young as Emmy and which we couldn't do in the theatre of course because no girl of 16 or 17 could sing 8 shows a week, couldn't sing two.

Andrew Lloyd Webber Quotes