My circle of friends are not actors at all. None of them are actors, really, because they're are not available. They're always off somewhere.

When you're a young actor you ring your agent every evening. It's not like when you're in Hollywood where you do one picture a year. You just hope you get a day on television.

I need a challenge 'cause I don't get the girl anymore.

I just try to play more and more difficult roles.

I just work in order to improve myself as an actor which is what I've always done.

I've never taken drugs - if you take a drug of your choice, you get some ecstatic feeling.

I'm very, very family oriented. I'm a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now.

If you're a leading actor you don't work with another actor. You work with a lady.

If you're a gardener you don't need a gym. [...] You're always carrying large sacks of manure all over.

In my day, the drug was alcohol and the weapon was a fist, so it was very sort of innocent and primitive. Now you've got drugs, guns, and knives, which are so lethal.

We should vote for the welfare of the country, not for the welfare of the party.

Nobody's a criminal to himself. I never play a criminal like a bad person.

If I see any injustice done, I have a big enough mouth and the position to open up about it.

I'm not a betting man, and even if I was, I certainly wouldn't bet on this! I would not bet on the Best Actor.

I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.

Since I was 19, I've had the most fun possible every single day, even when I had a rough life. It was the army which taught me about life, and the theater which taught me how good it could be.

That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn't be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.

I spent my entire time reading books and going to the cinema, just to escape.

I think it would be great for the Academy to recognize old age.

There are loads of black actors.You can't say: I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good but he's black, [so] I'll vote for him. You've got to give a good performance.

In real life, I'm afraid of heights - and people who get moral convictions... Adolf Hitler in London.

I learn the whole time. I think it would be dull if I thought I was going to work and wouldn't find something new. We always learn.

I spent my life in the library reading books.

I'm the happiest grandfather in the world, I promise you.

No English director would've cast me as an officer, I promise you. Not one.

People say to me, why did you do those films, and I say, for money. It wasn't for diamond rings or kidney shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills, it was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.

I've been in every disco in the world. I saw a picture of my wife Shakira and I dancing in Studio 54; I didn't even know someone had taken that picture.

When I was a young actor I was in a lot of film doing one day work and two days' work, and they've included all those titles, which I don't even remember. I think I've played the lead in about 75 movies.

If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.

One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.

I have enough money not to do pictures ever. I'm seventy years old. I don't want to get up at 6:30 in the morning and learn ten pages of dialogue to do with a bunch of creeps I don't like. It's gotta be fun for me.

When you're a movie star and you're young, you are always playing someone who's a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.

To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.

I don't think you retire from movies; movies retire you.

I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them jokes against yourself. If you praise yourself, your stories aren't funny.

The trouble with women? Elbows.

Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

It's vital to have your own space so you aren't constantly in each other's pockets.

I've never been out with a married woman, never. I respect others' properties.

And to Tom Cruise, for if you had won this, your asking price would have gone down so fast. Do you have any idea what supporting actors get paid? We get only one trailer, a small one, in the back.

About Superman and Batman: the former is how America views itself, the latter, darker character is how the rest of the world views America.

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, 'How much is that?'

I had an extraordinary belief in myself. For years people told me to give it up and even though I was poverty- stricken, I never thought I should give it up.

I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality.

I don't want to sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I do think there should be some sort of national service for young men.

I'm not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I'm still battling it out in the trenches.

I'm doing the next Batman. I have to become obsessed about what is offered to me.

I'd never been in one of those great big blockbusters.

I wear a baseball cap all the time, which I would never normally wear, and I walk very fast.

I want to stick around with the big boys. I don't want to be in the old folks home.