There are some men who are frightened by strong women and some men who are nurtured by them and feel nervous, with weak clinging vines. And I am very much of the latter category.

A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience’s sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.

I have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.

The ’20s are a very interesting period to me.

One of the things that you’re not really in control of – apart from everything – is your smell.

Nothing is harder to dramatize than happiness.

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.

I think every period – except for the 14th century, or something – has some merits.

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don’t we?

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.

The business of life is learning that you can’t lay down the terms.

I always like to arrive at the airport early to enjoy breakfast and lounge about so that when I get on the plane all my travel fever has disappeared.

Well, you’ve got to be known for something. The danger of extreme versatility is that you don’t spring to mind for anything.

Do you think he’s the murderer?””It’s worse than that — he’s an actor!

Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success,...

Although ‘L.A. Confidential’ is a long movie, there’s never a moment when you think, ‘I’m loving this… but when’s dinner?’ Each time I see it, I discover something I hadn’t noticed before. It has a tremendous skill in developing all the subplots.

There is almost nothing in your house that does not tell something about you.

Ninety-eight per cent of actors who actually make a living do so in front of a camera.

Most of us don’t want to be outsiders.

I just don’t believe in generalisations.

Constance: Tell me, what happened to William’s little maid? I never saw her again after that dinner.Mary Maceachran: Elsie? — She’s gone.Constance: Oh, it’s a pity, really. I thought it was a good idea to have someone in the house who is actually sorry he’s dead.

Education. Experience. Or are they the same thing?

Especially as I was an old friend, or at least I was a person she had known for a long time, which after a certain point is almost the same thing…

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman — Tell us about the film you’re going to make.Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It’s called “Charlie Chan In London”. It’s a detective story.Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually....

I always loved movies and the cinema; we always used to go to see films as a family.

I think Americans are wonderful film actors – the best in the world – but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.

I mean the truth is, I’ve always been interested in the whole setup of the Old World.

Plenty of friendships are sustainable through dinners and lunches, but will not stand a week away. So be careful with whom you go on holiday.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is – and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn’t even give me her telephone number – and she wrote in her diary: ‘A...

Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: “What about Claudette Colbert? She’s British, isn’t she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British?

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father’s was grander than my mother’s, so my mother had… to put up with the disapproval of my father’s relations.

I don’t seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next, but I always go for it when it does.

I think America has dealt with – I mean, this is simplistic, and of course I don’t live in America – but the impression I get is that there is not a kind of obligation to dislike those who are better off or be frightened of those who are worse off.

I like people who don’t accept boundaries. Like Florence Nightingale. And Napoleon or Louis XIV, though I’m not sure how much I’d have liked to meet them. I admire people who aren’t circumscribed by circumstance.

To be honest, when you’re running a series and you have an open end, you don’t want to limit yourself too much with the choices you’ve got for a particular character.

I come from a class which used to be called the gentry – which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.

We don’t really like rules. We think, in some way, they are an infringement of liberty.

Of course I love winning things; I can’t tell you how much I enjoy it.

I like to take a long time over breakfast, and I can’t bear to talk. If a guest is a breakfast talker it’s very important to invite another so they can talk to each other. Otherwise they spoil the newspaper reading and everything else.

I envy people who can think, ‘No, I’m not going to work today’ when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn’t all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.

You see, in America, it’s quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

I don’t think I’m an unkind person, I don’t think my books are unkind, and I don’t think my readers are unkind.

There isn’t much point in the whole ‘celebrity’ nonsense unless one is prepared to go out on a limb and, one hopes, speak up for some under-represented section of the community.

When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it’s hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It’s a general clean-out.

When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you’ve got to have a gut understanding of your material.

We live a life that is often spent in crowds – parties, festivals and first nights – so it’s nice to avoid them.

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.