- Maggie Smith used to have excellent skin. Have you seen her face lately? In a few more years, they'll have to unfold it to find out who she used to be.
- People living in Hollywood have to stay home if they're in a foul mood; anything outside the home is potential publicity.
- "It's very rare I've been able to get into the 20th century. When I turn from 1899 to 1900 I jump for joy. I did in Rebecca (1979), I got into the '30's then. I have done some modern stuff but I'm so thrilled I over-act like crazy. I've got pockets! I'm so used to wearing tights all the time that when I put my hands in my pockets I nearly fall over. I'm so unused to playing a modern guy. It all started because I was a classical actor, I was trained that way. When I left drama school, I wanted to do Shakespeare, I loved the words, I really fell in love with them, I loved the sound of them. So, most of my training was classical...".
- On Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1995) - "I was mad to do it, but I wanted to show the world that I was still alive and I could do other things apart from Sherlock Holmes. I hope they don't release it..."
- "Audrey really is a darling. There's something wonderful about her that no man can explain, but every man can feel!" (speaking of working with Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964)).
- Speaking of his wife, Joan Wilson: "We had a once-in-a-lifetime love. She was an incredible person, the best wife a man could have. This was the kind of relationship where I would start a sentence and she would finish it. Sometimes you can see behind somebody's eyes and feel as if you have known them all your life. That's how it was."
- "Don't be too brave. Bravery is a fine thing on some occasions, but sometimes it can be quite a dangerous thing. The stiff upper lip is not always the best." - After his breakdown caused by the death of his wife.
- I would love to do some comedy. To make people laugh is the greatest gift of all.
- "I'm not looking and I don't go hunting. I'm the type who's got to be found." (on love)
- Money to me is a very complicated game and I'm not very good at it. I try very hard, but I regard it merely as a necessary means to an end. I've no idea how to look after it.
- I always read any reviews about my own work - I think it's important to know the worst!
- Doing work you enjoy helps, too. I mean it helps if you can find a job that interests you enough so that each week when you're paid it seems like a minor miracle - and I've always been fortunate enough to do that.
- The most important thing when you're working with greatness is to learn from it, not challenge it.
- There is a tremendous delicacy in preserving Holmes in other people's imaginations because there are a million different ways of seeing him. You try not to interfere with anybody's image.
- I think I prefer acting on stage; I like to see if the audience is enjoying itself.
- "It was murder jumping about trying to have a good sword fight wearing all that heavy gear. And I felt such a nit anyway." (On playing d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers (1966).)
- "For a man who never existed it's extraordinary to celebrate a birthday." (on the play "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes", which was written to celebrate Holmes' 100th birthday)
- "I knew at the end of 'The Final Problem' in '84 that she had cancer, and the lights really went out in my life. (about his wife Joan)
- "You never get over a loss like that. You get used to it but you never get over it." (about losing his wife, Joan, to cancer)
- (On playing Sherlock Holmes) "Well, I don't mind, now, I mean . . . Uh, there was a time when people would say, 'How do you enjoy playing Holmes?' and I would say, 'I wouldn't cross the street to meet him'. I then discovered that, of course, I meant that he wouldn't cross the street to meet me. Then when I was doing the play, which taught me a very great deal because I was in touch with people, 'cause filming is quite isolated, and I realized how many children were seeing him and how - what a hero he was, to them. I thought, 'Oh, my, didn't know that', so I thought, 'My goodness, I have that joy', umm, of doing it for children."
- (On playing Sherlock Holmes) "I made terrible mistakes. I'm so miscast; I'm a romantic-heroic actor. So I was terribly aware that I had to hide an awful lot of me, and in so doing I think I look quite often brusque, or maybe sometimes even slightly rude. In fact Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Doyle's daughter, who's a great personal friend of mine, did once say to me, 'I don't think my father meant You-Know-Who to be quite so rude', and I said, 'I'm terribly sorry, Dame Jean, I'm just trying to hide me'.
- (On deciding he wanted to play Holmes, after rereading the entire canon) "And I discovered all sorts of things that I could do if I had had the opportunity to do it. So I said 'yes!', with enormous temerity, and a certain amount of fear, and an element of excitement. We approached the scripts. I said, 'But you've asked me to do Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. These aren't Sherlock Holmes - Doyle's stories.' I mean, the adapters had gone so far away. And the script editor said, 'Jeremy, you're here to act. Just get on with it'. And I tipped the table over and my Dover sole landed in his lap. And that was the beginning of the tousle. I used to take the whole canon with me to...the beginning of each film, and fight for Doyle. After about a year and a half I said, 'Listen, if you don't start taking care of me I may lose interest', because it was such a tussle. But than Granada Studios stepped in and were so remarkable and wonderful and gave me two weeks rehearsal instead of the one. So the first week I could fight for Doyle and the second week I could work with my fellow actors. And that's basically how it's been ever since. (November 1991 interview)
- (On the subject of Edward Hardwicke replacing David Burke as Watson) "Well, Edward's a very, very remarkable man...one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. And he wanted to fit in. So he watched the previous thirteen films (and) decided to try and look a little like David Burke, as much as he could, bless him. So he put on a rug, I mean a toupee, and, umm - and put lifts in his heels. And the first film we shot together was "The Abbey Grange". And we were running across a field, and he, he...these heels were too high so he was slipping and sliding. And I said, 'Oh, Edward, take them out! I'll bend my knees for the rest of the film!'"
- (About his wife, Joan Wilson) "She saw me on stage in Design for Living and said, 'That's the man for me'. She organized the meeting and we married in 1976. We had a decade together...I loved her dearly, she was so beautiful and gutsy."
- "I learned from Alec Guinness how disciplined you have to be to sustain a role...He's also very human. He does not like the audience. If someone coughs, he sends his man with cough drops to Row J, Seat 5. Once, on a rare hot day, someone in the front row was using the program as a fan. Guinness knocked it out of his hand with a cane. Totally destroyed the illusion of blindness!" (on acting with Alec Guinness in the stage play "A Voyage 'Round My Father" (1971).)
- "They get obsessive, ringing me up, grabbing me. It can be quite disturbing..." (recalling the overly-obsessed female fans he encountered during the run of "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes")
- I remember I was at the Winter Garden Theatre, opposite was the film War and Peace (1956), in which I played Audrey Hepburn's brother. And I was, what was I? Twenty or so? I thought 'Heavens, I've arrived.' How wrong can you be! (about his role as Nicholas Rostov)
- I'm not a very physical person, really, I used to think it would do me a great deal of good to lift weights, but I gave it up when my neck started getting bigger than my head.
- "I almost drowned in the pool because of the beauty of her." (Speaking of his co-star in War and Peace (1956), Audrey Hepburn).
- To me, the Sherlock Holmes stories are about a great friendship. Without Watson, Holmes might well have burnt out on cocaine long ago. I hope the series shows how important friendship is.
- (On being typecast as Holmes) "I don't really mind actually. I must be very grateful to Arthur Conan Doyle because we are in the deepest recession in England, and only five percent of my profession are at work. I'm one of them at work, so I'm not knocking it."
- Well...unbelievably, we've never seen Doyle before. Now, don't ask me why that is, I don't understand. All these years, no one has done his stories. They've done derivatives. They've taken the names of Holmes and Watson, but they've never done his stories. I *cannot* think why. At least that gave me something to do.
- The trouble with adapters is, of course, that it's not a natural job. Adapting things means that you really haven't got a creative idea of your own. You're making some money on the side. They consequently, all the time, try and do their own thing. I sit there and read the script and I say, 'But don't you think Doyle is better?' That's been the problem all the way through--trying to do Doyle.
- "There may have been this beautiful girl, that he fell flat for, but she didn't look at him. So that broke his heart and he thought, 'Well, I'm not going to be rejected again,' so that's why he's the way he is." (On developing a past for Holmes)
- "Watson is much more my kind of person...Watson is a warm, loving, sunny person who's very enthusiastic -- and hurt and slightly upset when his friend is rude to people or him. This is much more like me. Playing Watson was tremendous fun, and it taught me a lot about how to approach Holmes when the Granada series got under way. I learned a great deal about the inter-relation between the two men..." (he played Dr. Watson in the stage-play "The Crucifer of Blood" (1980-1981) with Charlton Heston as Holmes.)
- He's an upholder of the law. He's also a law unto himself. In other words, he releases people and Scotland Yard says 'How could you do that?' He also loves children because I've wondered where his love is channeled. Because no one can be that unemotional. So whenever I can, I have the Irregulars around. I think Holmes loves children.
- (Speaking of Holmes only wearing the deerstalker in the country and the different pipes he used depending on his mood) "So, all these things you can get from Doyle, and when other actors who play Holmes and just pop on the deerstalker, and his cape and the pipe and walk straight through it, puff...puff...puff--and get on with the next thing--that's probably the safer way to train -- but it's not exactly being true to Doyle. It's just an image, like a cliché, which is not real."
- The other thing is, of course, if you go into the canteen for lunch dressed like what I call the 'damaged penguin' no one will really sit with you, because you look like death warmed-up. When you've got the mask on, and the black hair and the black suit, you really are frightfully cheerful to have lunch opposite.
- Well, the stories leap from the printed page. I mean, when it says, 'Holmes crawls through the bracken looking for a clue like a golden retriever,' you can see it with your mind's eye. When you do it, it's hysterically funny. I've even had people in the studio, when I had suddenly crawled across the floor, say, 'Not another of those.' And that's the lighter side.
- When my three older brothers became a teacher, a painter, and an architect, I don't think my parents knew how I'd turn out!
- "I was overwhelmed with America then. The enormous vitality--the hustle and bustle were just too much for me. I'm older now, and find America very exciting. And the American women! They're so wonderfully groomed - they're beautiful, really. I find them terribly attractive!" (1964)
- I guess the only way I get things done is to do a *lot* of them! When I'm going at break-neck speed, I seem to get much more accomplished.
- I no longer feel threatened by Holmes, in fact I really enjoy playing him. Holmes is an upholder of the law, and he has a magnetism and mental genius that have been compulsive for people throughout the last hundred years. I was astounded when I realized how attractive he is to them (women). You'd never suspect it for one moment from the books. Girls long to seduce him. I do know that the team at Granada Studios are the finest. To everyone who has worked on these films of 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle''s stories in the past decade, only one word can express how I feel: Bravo! Holmes has finally given me recognition as a real actor, not just an aging pretty face.
- (On his stage role as Hamlet (1961), from a 1994 BBC2 documentary on Hamlet) "I was too young in many ways - I was too young intellectually, I was too young philosophically. I was Byronic, I was very handsome, I had qualities - but I'd much rather seen other actors - I wasn't convinced by me."
- (On his stage role as Hamlet (1961). From a 1994 BBC2 documentary on Hamlet) "I couldn't believe the circumstances [of the story]... I thought they were so monstrous, and I was very rough on my 'mother,' I think. I mean physically rough. I think, yes, I was angry at that time
- my mother had been killed savagely in a car accident in 1959, and I
- there was anger in me. And I think that came through. I felt cheated
- I felt *my mother* had been cheated - the rage of that came
- I would like to have been a soldier for a while for my father's sake, but I had rheumatic fever at sixteen and never saw any kind of military service. When I said I wanted to be an actor, it was the end. It was a great disappointment to my father.
- Looking back, I'm very proud of what my parents did. They sacrificed a great deal.
- (On his father's opposition to him becoming an actor) "My father thought any respectable middle-class boy shouldn't do a thing like that. He thought it was all drinking champagne out of slippers." (1976)
- I had an amazing mother who used to say to us, 'I don't want you to do anything until you absolutely can't help it, or you're sure you want to do it.' Then, when my father would come home and scream, 'For God's sake, get these boys going!', my mother would answer: 'Not until they know what they want.'
- (about meeting famed theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie) "And I said, 'I want to be an actor vewy, vewy much.' [Guthrie] was kind of overwhelmed at this idiot. I remember I was wearing my brother's coat to make me look bigger. And he said I could have a walk-on part in *Tamburlaine*. 'Or,' he said, 'you should go with that 'r' sound to Central School,' which I did. About 10 years later I worked with him on Broadway when I played Troilus for him. Trroilus! 'As true as Troilus,' I had to say."
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