A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.

A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.

When you get to a certain age, the work begins to thin out.

Your senses are reeling all the time. Finally you find something to write and the very next day you go out and see something else which totally contradicts what you've written and every conclusion you've come to.

A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?

I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.

You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.

If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.

We had five goats, two dogs, a cat and racks of commentaries on Shakespeare.

Most films are written and made with a hero around 35, or even 25.

It's a question of keeping one's eyes and ears open and watching how other people play the game. They're watching me too, to see what my attitude is like.

I'm playing one of the principal roles, which gives you more clout and more confidence.

A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.

I got a lot of energy from directing the film 'Ladies In Lavender.' You wonder if you have the stamina because as an actor you can lounge around the trailer during the scenes you're not in, but as a director, you're there from first thing in the morning to last thing at night every day of the week. I found it incredibly energising.

I mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams,' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

I've got a range as an actor! There was a time I played dramatic leading men.

I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause, then it's wonderful.

If I was to put a little flag in everywhere I've been in the world, there'd be a lot of little flags.

My face lends itself to austere characters, and unless they're two-dimensional, I will do them. Any actor will tell you that an interesting villain is much more interesting to play.

People think I have the benefit of a public school education. I have this suave and debonair label, but really, I'm as common as muck.

Politics is the most corrupt profession on Earth, no matter where you are.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

We have to take risks in British television. It has to stop playing to the lowest common denominator and patronising people.

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings.

You should encourage a child to show off. You can say to a child, 'Stop being rude,' 'Stop shouting,' 'Stop jumping around on the furniture.' But 'Stop showing off'? That's awful.

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.

Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.

I met Kevin when I was 19, at a Second City workshop. We were paired up together in the first class I went to. By the end of the class we formed our improv group, and over the next three years we performed leading up to the formation of The Kids in the Hall.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

Poor air quality, which can be influenced by a variety of fumes, chemicals and allergens, is arguably the leading cause of triggers for most asthmatics in urban areas.

Young leading cadres have risen up by helicopter. They should really rise step by step.

The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

I'd love to talk to Joaquin Phoenix because he's a very private guy. Also, he's creating a new kind of sexy leading man. To me, his face is new and might be legendary someday.

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty.

Now, when we face a problem like global warming, and you understand that the biggest impacts on global warming come from business and industry, I think business needs to take a leading role.

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.

If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them - not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.

Such an arrangement would provide Taiwan and China with a forum for dialogue whereby they may forge closer ties based on mutual understanding and respect, leading to permanent peace in the Taiwan Strait.

I shouldn't say I'm looking forward to leading a normal life, because I don't know what normal is.

We're doing a lot of inspection on the leading edge of our wing on 114 and 121, the first two flights.

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.