Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Although I'm largely doing other things in life, it's very nice occasionally to put my toe back in the waters of show business.
If every play was three weeks, I'd do lots of plays. It's just the idea of six months, I think, that might drive me a bit nuts.
I think maybe in a way it gets worse because you come in with a real reputation and they've paid you lots of money and all that.
I had Courtney Love's left bosom out of her dress on my plate in front of me. It was extraordinary. I didn't know where to look.
I play the sort of character who would sell his grandmother for career advancement, something I've come across a lot with actors.
I'm not a great believer in marriages as an institution, or even in very long term relationships. I'm not sure we're built that way.
My grandmother was utterly convinced I'd wind up as the Archbishop of Canterbury. And, to be honest, I've never entirely ruled it out.
I love in Notting Hill. You live in Beverly Hills. Everyone in the world knows who you are. My mother has trouble remembering my name.
The angry Scot is a cliche not without some foundation. That's the Lowland Scot - I'm a Highlander. We're particularly lovely and charming.
I have no doubt that I'd be a marvelous father. Maybe not when they're tiny, but when they're a little bit older, I think I'd be rather good.
I don't think there's much point in putting me a deep, dark, heavy, emotional film because there are people who do it so much better than I do.
The reason I turn down 99% of a hundred, I mean a thousand, scripts is because romantic comedies are often very romantic but seldom very funny.
I was fat-shamed the other day on a British newspaper. The headline was 'Four Bellies and a Turkey Neck.' They weren't wrong. I looked shocking.
I get very annoyed when people think I'm nice or diffident or a polite English gentleman. I'm a nasty piece of work, and people should know that.
I don't particularly like babies. I don't mind them for about four minutes. That's my max. After that I can't quite see what everyone's fussing about.
But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you're an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.
Like lots of people who say, 'I'm going to write a novel,' it's actually more comfortable to think I could write a novel than to discover that you can't.
For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.
I have known a few good marriages, but very few. And others look to me like they're pretty miserable. I don't really think that's a recipe for happiness.
As it is, I have a limited range as an actor - light comedy. I have never been a fan of romantic comedies, and yet that is what I have ended up mostly doing.
In the last couple of weeks I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra. Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough attention to women’s breasts?
I think I'm rather young and sprightly, but then you see pictures of yourself and think, 'Who is that old man?' and I realise I'm not as young as I thought I was.
I'm a great believer in eccentrically-shaped modern families. Because I've seen them work so well. And as long as everyone loves each other, it can work very well.
My laziness is really profound. I'm really interested in where it comes from - it almost feels chemical. And we've all got ADD now, short attention span and all that.
I've got four houses in my street. I live in two, and the others are empty. I'll buy more as they come up, because I think it would be great to have the entire street.
If it's a choice between doing a film and not doing a film, I'd rather not. But then, you remember that you're supposed to be earning a living and that it's your career.
I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I... probably can't!
I'm a terrible actor. I'm still learning. When I first started, I wish I knew then to trust myself more, really. I was in a terrible panic in the early part of my career.
A lot of actors look at scripts and think, 'How will this stretch me as an actor?' But I always thought, 'Do I want to turn the page? Is this going to make people laugh?'
But when you're a celebrity, you discover that you're no longer the pursuer, but the one being pursued. That's one of the disappointments I have had since becoming a single man.
I'm quite proud of some of the films I've done, but less for the acting than for the fact that they're unpretentious and entertaining. I'm proud of having made unpretentious choices.
'The Lair of the White Worm' is quite a strange film. It's difficult to be good when you're saying lines that have been translated from Spanish to English by someone who speaks French.
There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.
For a few years, I thought I was putting show business behind me. I was busy doing other things in life, particularly with politics. I was not out looking for films, really. I lost interest.
Do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year-long monogamous, faithful, relationships? No, No, No. Whoever said they were? Only the Bible or something. No one ever said that was a good idea.
Frankly, I think I'm marvelous in rehearsal! Then you turn the camera on, and it gets stiff and tight. And then you trudge back to your trailer feeling sad. That's been my experience of film acting.
At my school, which was all boys, I played almost exclusively lady parts. When I say lady parts, I mean parts that were ladies. To actually play lady parts would be weird, even by English standards.
Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I know that syndrome. I fancy offices, so there must be something wrong with me. Even the window cleaner intrigues me. It's a very sexy environment.
Some newspapers in Britain have become closer to these kind of mafia families. They wield an incredible power. They choose our governments, they choose our prime ministers, and they live above the law.
I'm quite jealous of my Scottish relations, in whose culture everyone, in a Jane Austen kind of way, got married very young, when you're too young to be cynical or jaded and just started having children.
All I know is for a number of years, if someone like me called police for a burglary, a mugging, or something happened to me, chances are that a photographer or reporter would turn up before a policeman.
I suppose after 'Four Weddings' I was very busy for a bit, and I imagined that was my career, but I never had that thing of, 'I'm burning to be an actor. If I don't act, I'm not alive.' I've never had that.
There were various turning points, but the main one at the beginning was that I was going off to do another degree in the history of art. I would have ended up as some art historian at Sotheby's or something.
I don't hate L.A., but I'm nervous about becoming one of those people who has a ferocious interest in how films did at the box office that weekend and, you know, would want to meet for egg-white omelets in the morning.
Japanese women have always loved my films, even when no one else did. Ever since I made 'Maurice' in the 1980s, I've been getting hundreds of letter from Japanese girls. They definitely have a special place in my heart.
I've always enjoyed sex scenes, though you're not really supposed to. The classic answer is, 'Oh, it's not sexy at all because there are so many technicians standing around.' But I've always found them extremely arousing.
I have this absurd syndrome where I get these out-of-the-blue, pathetic panic attacks. It'll be in a very easy, simple scene when everything is going swimmingly, and then suddenly, bang, I'm shvitzing and can't remember my lines.
The emphasis in 'Notting Hill' was perhaps, I thought, slightly more on the romance than on the comedy. But I think 'Mickey Blue Eyes' is maybe slightly more on the comedy. And the tone on 'Mickey Blue Eyes,' it's a far sillier film.
After I found that I had become an actor, slightly to my surprise, I did have some insecurity, and I did take some rather strange acting classes at a place called The Actor's Studio in London. I don't think they did me any good at all.
I never meant to be in romantic comedies; it's just what ended up happening. But they are tricky, in a post-1960s sexual revolution way. It was easier when you couldn't have sex scenes: everything crackled very nicely. They're not easy.