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

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" In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor. "

" 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? "

" The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?' "

" One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow. "

" At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I'm Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim. "

" I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, 'It's a wrap,' it's gone completely. I'm a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work. "

" I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle. "

" I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters. "

" 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 just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home. "

" I don't worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane. "

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

" I don't do it often, but I do cry. I also laugh a lot; people tell me I'm funny and I do like to laugh. "

" As an actor, I'll play anything. "

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

" Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you. "

" 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. "

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

" Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons. "

" The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to. "

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

" What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone. "

" I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier. "

" My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that. She is a completely intertwined partner. She is the other half of me. Also, we're still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be. "

" I'm always slightly envious of people who become extremely rich without anyone knowing who the hell they are, like financiers. "

" I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for. "

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

" My view of actors is that basically they're all harmless lunatics who'd be on the psychiatrist's couch, except that we get this sort of catharsis every six months or so, and we go and be absolutely someone else. "

" Am I a car aficionado? No: for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn't even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15. "