| # | Quote |
|---|
| 1 | (when asked what he plans to do after finishing his last Holmes films) "Now I think it is time to take lots of rest and think about what I actually want to do myself, not about what other people want me to do. But it will be a great comfort to me as I get older to be able to look back and say: 'Oh, well, I did Holmes and I managed to do it not completely badly.'" (May 1990) |
| 2 | (on the loss of his wife, Joan) "I have got used to people saying I will get over it. You never do get over it. You just get used to it. But I am not very good at losing people I love. I lost my mother, she was killed in a car accident, and it threw me for a loop." (May 1990) |
| 3 | (when asked if children are important to him) "Yes, they are. I have three. David, who is my son by Annie, and two step-children by Joan. They are Caleb and Rebecka - or Beckie as she loved to be called. They all mean a tremendous amount to me, and I feel very spoiled and lucky to have them." (May 1990) |
| 4 | "She said she liked the way I changed weight from one leg to the other." - on his wife Joan seeing him for the first time on stage in 'Design for Living' (1973) |
| 5 | (on the subject of starting his own theatre) "No, not now. I tell you, it's all changed. I've done that. I did that in Canada. I went to Canada and I did a production of 'The Tempest,' in 1982. I produced it, directed it, and played Prospero. I hobbled away afterwards. I was exhausted. I also did it with Robin Phillips, the great Robin Phillips, who is still in Canada. We did a year of--company theatre, it was called--in Greenwich. Again, I tottered away. And I think my services would be most appreciated by possibly the new young Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, and I may, at a given moment, go and offer my services and say 'Can I sweep the stage?' or "Is there anything I can do for you?" I think I should join a company, not create one, and make my contribution that way as a--whatever--a talking head, whatever. 'Pick my brains. Do you want to know anything about Laurence Olivier, my mentor? Is there anything that he said that might help you?' One thing, of course, Olivier said, 'Every actor should have a full orchestra at his beck and call, vocally, and the body of a god.' And he had both and he was 57 at the time. So people could sort of bounce off me." (November 6, 1991) |
| 6 | (on what he will remember best about the Holmes stories) "They are a great essay in male friendship, which has gone now. Men's friendship has been debased. One of the lovely things about Holmes and Watson is that they do have this great platonic relationship." (May 1990) |
| 7 | We are spiritual beings who can achieve all that we set out to do. |
| 8 | "I meditate and do yoga. I sit cross-legged and try not to levitate too much." (1991) |
| 9 | (On the heroic appeal of Sherlock Holmes) "Tina Turner may not agree, but the world does need heroes and yet again, at the end of another century, Holmes captures the heroic bent...I think he's a very modern person. He's interested in the poor, the street, law and justice. He got there before Clint Eastwood." (1989) |
| 10 | "My mother had this extraordinary way of making us flower. She wasn't just 'my mother'; her name was Elizabeth, and she had open doors and windows in her soul--that's the only way I can put it. Everybody came to my mother. She was like a light of great warmth." (1985) |
| 11 | (about the many female fans who came to see "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes" - he felt they were coming to see Holmes rather than him) "Women throughout the world identify with what's going on and see me as Holmes. It's all very flattering and frightening at times. I just have to realize I'm in the fantasy business, but I do feel responsible and I get very concerned about the power this character wields." |
| 12 | (about David Burke) "The last time we finished filming together, I went down to the same train and waved goodbye to him. That was absolutely devastating. I don't know how I got back to the hotel. I thought 'What are we going to do now?' I was so proud of him for going back to his son. There would be more happy marriages if fathers went back to their children. His son was only two at the time." |
| 13 | (About Rosalie Williams playing Mrs. Hudson) "That is a relationship which of course, I invented, because I really find it so difficult to have no woman to play opposite. That's a very important little relationship which has come through on the films. I love Rosalie and I'd worked with her before. Rosalie and I love each other so much." |
| 14 | Holmes could be rude, impatient, abrupt, and his intolerance of fools was legendary. I tried to show all this, all of the man's incredible brilliance. But there are some cracks in Holmes' marble, as in an almost-perfect Rodin statue. And I tried to show that, too. |
| 15 | Edward is even more remarkable. I'll give you an example. You can publish it or not, it makes no difference to me. When I came out of the asylum, the person who collected me was Edward Hardwicke. He took me to an Italian restaurant. I had a pasta and a glass of red wine. He then drove me back to my home where we sat and had a cup of tea. It was Edward Hardwicke. He is one of the loveliest people, and I suppose he is the best friend that any man has ever had....in life. Which is after all how Doyle describes Watson. |
| 16 | (on his stay at the hospital after his breakdown) "When I saw my son looking at me with tears in his eyes, I decided I would not let that happen again." |
| 17 | (about Edward Hardwicke) "So, he's the best to me, the best friend a man's ever had. I mean personally." |
| 18 | (On playing the "definitive" Sherlock Holmes) "I've done 33 Sherlock Holmes stories and bits of them are all right. But the definitive Sherlock Holmes is really in everyone's head. No actor can fit into that category because every reader has his own ideal." (February 1991) |
| 19 | I was talking about becoming. What I mean by that is an inner life. Watson describes you-know-who as a mind without a heart; that's hard to play, hard to become. So what I did was to invent an inner life. I mean, I know what his nanny looked like, for example; she was covered in starch. She probably scrubbed him, but never kissed him. I don't think he probably saw his mother until he was about eight. Maybe caught a touch of the fragrance of her scent and the rustle of her dress. I guess collage days were fairly complicated because he was quite isolated. He probably saw a girl across the quadrangle and fell in love, but she never looked at him....so he closed that door. And he became a brilliant fencer, of course, as we know, and a master at boxing...brilliant athlete...and many more little tiny little details which I have to kind of make up to fill this kind of well...that Doyle so brilliantly left out. (November 1991 interview) |
| 20 | "And what is so extraordinary to me is that no one's done Doyle before, and I find that bewildering!" (November 1991 interview) |
| 21 | (on his role in War and Peace (1956)) "I was whisked off from Manchester to Rome and lived in a fantasy world for six months. At the end of the film there was talk of taking me to Hollywood to groom me to be a star.' |
| 22 | "When someone dies, people presume you are eligible again, but I'm not, really. And who's to choose who? With me, it's always been the lady." (February, 1991) |
| 23 | (about his early speech impediment caused by an extra attachment of skin under his tongue) "I was tongue-tied. I had a very weak 'r' sound and had to work hard on it. I didn't have the condition corrected until I was 17. And then I went to the Central School of Speech and Drama to relearn how to speak." |
| 24 | (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." |
| 25 | 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.' |
| 26 | (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) |
| 27 | Looking back, I'm very proud of what my parents did. They sacrificed a great deal. |
| 28 | 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. |
| 29 | (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
was very angry about that, because my son, when she was killed, was only three months old. And I was - there was anger - it was interesting- 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
through." |
| 30 | (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." |
| 31 | 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. |
| 32 | 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. |
| 33 | "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) |
| 34 | 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! |
| 35 | 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. |
| 36 | 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. |
| 37 | (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." |
| 38 | 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. |
| 39 | "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.) |
| 40 | "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) |
| 41 | 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. |
| 42 | 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. |
| 43 | (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." |
| 44 | 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. |
| 45 | "I almost drowned in the pool because of the beauty of her." (Speaking of his co-star in War and Peace (1956), Audrey Hepburn). |
| 46 | 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. |
| 47 | 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) |
| 48 | "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") |
| 49 | "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).) |
| 50 | (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." |
| 51 | (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!'" |
| 52 | (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) |
| 53 | (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'. |
| 54 | (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." |
| 55 | "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) |
| 56 | "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) |
| 57 | "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) |
| 58 | "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).) |
| 59 | I think I prefer acting on stage; I like to see if the audience is enjoying itself. |
| 60 | 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. |
| 61 | The most important thing when you're working with greatness is to learn from it, not challenge it. |
| 62 | 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. |
| 63 | I always read any reviews about my own work - I think it's important to know the worst! |
| 64 | 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. |
| 65 | "I'm not looking and I don't go hunting. I'm the type who's got to be found." (on love) |
| 66 | I would love to do some comedy. To make people laugh is the greatest gift of all. |
| 67 | "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. |
| 68 | 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." |
| 69 | "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)). |
| 70 | 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..." |
| 71 | "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...". |
| 72 | People living in Hollywood have to stay home if they're in a foul mood; anything outside the home is potential publicity. |
| 73 | 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. |
$400,000
