A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

There's quite a lot of bad stuff written about me. My wife even says a lot of bad stuff about me. But she is wonderful.

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought, That's what I want to do.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

I see myself as 38, but you don't notice it.

January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.

My own mentality is that I've retired. They send me these scripts and if I absolutely have to do it, then I go to work.

When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

At 69, I got the girl! And it wasn't a 68-year-old girl, either.

I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.

The standing ovation threw me... to be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.

If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.

As an actor, I'll play anything.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.

Every time you get a movie, you get a medical. So you know, you know you're alright for a couple of weeks.

For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

I admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.

I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.

I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'