Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887 - 1976) lived and painted.
What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?
I'm only an actor. I'm not a writer. I'm not going to leave any legacy. All I've ever done is learn the lines and say them.
When I came out, I told my stepmother Gladys, and she just said she had known for years and was glad I wasn't lying anymore.
If I have any audience, they can know that anything I am in, I would go see, with the expectation of being really satisfied.
In Singapore, Malcolm X type of activity would be extremely difficult because the government can be very harsh on lawbreakers.
In the '50s and '60s, the life of a gay man was a secret. Homosexuality was illegal, so you didn't draw attention to yourself.
I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book.
Acting is no longer about lying. It's now about revealing the truth. People are at ease with me now. Honesty is the best policy.
My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out.
Gandalf's a good guy, and it's a good part. He says the right things, he believes the right things. An actor can have fun with it.
I'm not someone who wears shades all the time and ducks into a darkened car in case I'm recognized - that would be absolute misery.
Some relationships get easier as you get older, depending on what sort of person you are. I don't think I've got any better at them.
Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.
That's the imagination that happens in the theater. That imagination is translated in film by the film magicians and all the technology.
The wonderful thing about modern medicine is that so many of these complaints that used to signify old age and decline can be coped with.
When I left Cambridge, I applied to regional repertory theaters in the U.K. and got accepted by one of them... And here I am, still at it.
Anyone in public life who comes out, comes out primarily for themselves, and their life is immediately improved. That's what happened to me.
If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you.
I always walk up the escalator on the Tube, and I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and that's good exercise, but you need more than that.
To know you are in the company with people who love and care for each other, as well as for whatever they are working on, is almost essential.
It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier.
Gandalf the Grey was always the guy I prefer. Gandalf the White was driven to do a particular job, whereas Gandalf the Grey is a bit more humane.
If you've got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed - I've just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.
Anyone who thinks Peter Jackson would fall for market forces around him rather than artistic integrity doesn't know the guy or the body of his work.
There are still times in my life where I pull back from being totally honest, and I can't imagine a single straight person who would understand that.
Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.
I increasingly see organized religion as actually my enemy. They treat me as their enemy. Not all Christians, of course. Not all Jews, not all Muslims.
Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone's aware that the camera doesn't.
Why live outside the US? Do you want health care or safe food products or democracy or something? They're all overrated. Stay for the excellent cable TV.
I used to comfort myself when I became an actor that it was a useful job, entertaining people. And it was important to do it as well as you possibly can.
I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.
I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn't know they had got it, and it went on the rampage.
The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.
The BAFTAs give the British point of view, and the Oscars give the American point of view, but the truth is we're all working in an international industry.
I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them.
The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look, because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.
When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that - in real life - I wasn't doing.
That was the big effect Lord of the Rings had on me. It was discovering New Zealand. And even more precious were the people- not at all like the Australians.
As for the clarity of the 48 frames, I've heard people say that it looks odd, it's too demanding, there's too much information, you don't know where to look.
When I was playing Gandalf, I didn't think, 'Oh my dear, I'm playing a 7,000 year old wizard,' because I've never met one, and I don't know what they're like.
For old actors, just remember that inside you're only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you've forgotten how to do what kids know automatically.
Elijah looks angelic but his beauty of spirit is what makes his Frodo leap out of the screen. Unalloyed goodness is one of the most difficult attributes to act.
I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.
I remember Tom Stoppard saying to me when I came out, 'I feel so sorry for you, because you'll never have children.' These days I would say, 'Well, why not, Tom?'
I have got prostate cancer, and I have to keep monitoring that. It's no problem, it's under control and I'm very cool about it, but other people are dying from it.
I can't take on all the worries of the world, you know. I can only talk about being gay and being an actor. I'll have to leave those other battles to somebody else.
Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.
2D looks so flat. Well, it is, of course, it's flat. But 3D isn't. And for an adventure story that takes you into a long-distant, fictional world, it's ideal, I think.
Will I miss Gandalf? Well, I don't miss him, because people are constantly coming up to me mentioning him and talking about him, so I don't feel that I've lost contact.