Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a big classical actor.
The monarchy has almost always been unpopular.
It was hard to get work when I was a young actor.
Jennifer Aniston was a lovely girl, very unspoilt.
I feel that too much fuss is made about being gay.
Clint Eastwood was a most delightful man to work with.
I'm very lucky in that my feet are firmly on the ground.
The Hollywood machine is unfamiliar to me and unfriendly.
In America, people come up to me and say, 'Hi, Sir Humph!'
My father was a doctor. I've never been very warm towards doctors.
My private life has never been a secret. I've never been a closet queen.
I'm getting better, but I used to pull away from emotion, and from people.
One advantage of doing Lear at 70 is that you don't have to play an old man.
I live in the country, and I have a very happy life. I just do the job and go home.
We've had other things come up in their place, but I don't think' anything beats morals.
Ian McKellen always said I should come out. But why? I make my living playing heterosexuals.
I don't have the vocal dexterity, nor do I have the desire to put myself in among the giants.
I was always a supporting actor. It is nice to know one has the equipment to be a leading actor.
I used to get notes from directors, 'Please, Nigel, smile at the curtain calls.' I hate them so much.
In my mornings I can do what I like - go to art galleries, museums and things, go to lunch with people.
As the years have gone by, I have become more confident, but I'm still not completely at ease with myself.
Surprise! Surprise! An Academy Award nomination and suddenly you're outed? Did I mind? Oh, very, very much.
My father was a man very much like Arthur Winslow. He was a very stern man and very much the authoritarian figure.
I don't want to hear that Harry Belafonte is out there. It forces me not to see the audience as an anonymous mass.
The best way to get people to accept you is to move about the community and show them there's nothing to be afraid of.
Acting gives me the opportunity to be fascinating on stage or, I suppose; properly speaking, pretend to be fascinating.
I was quite a plain boy. I stayed in work and eeked out a living, bit parts on TV, walk-ons in films, repertory companies.
I would never have told my father a lie. We were brought up to be very truthful. I would never lie today. It's impossible.
I've been a homosexual all my life. My partner and I don't want to stand up and say we're gay, because we think that's wrong.
People still talk about 'Yes, Minister.' Americans, too; they love it. It was a happy period for me and it did change my life.
I really don't like talking about me - me as me, that is. Me in relation to what I do is another matter. But me as me is boring.
I went into acting because I was hiding from myself, and although acting has become more of a habit now, I think I am still hiding.
I know people say plays are only an evening's entertainment. But you can make it mean a lot to the audience, even a farce or comedy.
I think you start in middle life to recognize your vulnerabilities, if you're lucky. You admit them and people find that interesting.
I had no financial support from my parents, but, I suppose, I did have moral support - although they really didn't know what was going on.
I can't grumble. I've been very content with the way things have gone. I may have minor quibbles as we all have, but I'm still working at 70.
Trevor and I had been going to awards ceremonies for years. People knew. Look, if you don't get married by age 65, people know something's up.
On the stage you can get away with imposing the emotions on yourself, but with film it really has to come from inside. It's much more intense.
My whole career has been a struggle for dignity and justification, to prove that I'd made the right decision to be an actor in the first place.
I'm very pernickety about cast and make-up. Continuity things can go dreadfully wrong in film; the beards are different, red waistcoats become blue.
I do a play a year, or every 18 months, and you get your comedies and your dramas, but you hardly get anything that touches some kind of core in you.
It's like the Boy Scouts' motto, be prepared. You've got to be ready when the moment is offered. If you're not, you can actually screw it up for life.
I would never shortchange an audience. I believe in doing every single performance with as much integrity and concentration and feeling as I can muster.
I've never been afraid of being vulnerable on stage. It's a large part of life, and I think it's being dishonest to disallow an audience to see that side.
When you set yourself up to be apart from rest of mankind, you're in danger of crashing further than they ever could. That's the trouble with royalty, after all.
If I hadn't done 'Shadowlands,' which was a sort of emotional release for me as a person as well as an actor, it might have been less easy to have done 'George III.'
I really ran away in 1951 from South Africa, where I lived with my mother and father - who was a doctor - to come back to England to find myself, then hide what I found.
I started to admit vulnerabilities and things that I was trying to hide before. Shyness, anxiety, guilt and all those things that I have in me are now quite freely shown.
My father was a Victorian product. He didn't marry until he was over 40. I knew him more as a grandfather than a father. You didn't lie or cheat with him. I would never have defied my father.
I had my doubts about 'Yes, Prime Minister' being successful in the U.S. because your system of government is so different than ours. But the show does seems to have a very good audience in the states.