I very, very, very rarely lose my temper. I do get cross sometimes when encountering something that I feel is improper, that I feel is lacking in justice and equity, and this all sounds very pompous and over the top - but these are the things that really upset me: intolerance, prejudice etc. I suppose in more mundane matters, I'm impatient.
Richard Attenborough
There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.
And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.
My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.
I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
What actually happened with 'Miracle' was that someone saw me in 'Jurassic Park' and said, 'We want someone with a white beard - how about him?' I've got a round face, white hair, a white beard. I can wear half-moon glasses and waddle a little, cope with a cane, raise my hat.
I know Pandit Ravi Shankar was very upset with me, as I did not use his compositions in 'Gandhi.' I thought that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would prove more effective than his music. It was one of my biggest miscalculations.
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.
The old adage about acting - that it's 98% energy and 2% talent - is true, you know.
Say what you will about 'Miracle on 34th Street'; I can take my grandchildren to it. If I had a maiden aunt, I could take her, or my ma and pa if they were alive.
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. He lived in the 18th century; as you all know, he was an Englishman who was involved in the writing of American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the French Constitution, wrote the great book called 'The Rights of Man' - commercial over.
I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.
I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.
If I were able to write, I probably would. But movies have given me a part of my life where I can express feelings and bring convictions to an audience as if I could write. So I made 'Gandhi' about human relations, prejudice and the empire. In 'Cry Freedom' I expressed my horror and disgust about apartheid.
I want to be remembered as a storyteller.
I adore my family; they are my joy. However, I am committed to my work. If, on a Saturday morning when I was ostensibly going to be with the children, and something arose at RADA or at UNICEF or at the orphanage or whatever, I would allow the other pressures to take precedent.
If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.
'E.T.' depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius.
I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'
Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.
I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.
I have no great interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker.
In the late 1940s, there weren't any pop stars, and TV didn't exist.
I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.
At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.
I prefer fact to fiction.
I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.
I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.
Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.
I'm a passionate trade unionist.
I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.
What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.
In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.
I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man: who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.
I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant - that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, an argument and so on - and I can't do that, and I'm not in that bracket at all.
I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.
I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.
And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.
David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.
Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.
If someone says they're going to ring me at 10 o'clock and it's 10 past and they haven't rung, I'm irritated.
I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.
You act in a movie, and at the end of the day, the director and editor decide what your performance is.
I'm 4 ft. 2 in. and not exactly a matinee idol.
When I'm directing a movie, nothing else matters.
I think there were times when, if circumstances had developed, I might have been tempted into politics. I am a fan of Tony Blair. I think Gordon Brown is a fine man, but I think he's headed for one hell of a bloody struggle.
When me and Sheila got married, all we had was an oval table, four chairs, a bed, and a painting by Matthew Smith.
I think 'E.T.' is a quite extraordinary piece of cinema.
I don't really like the Oscars; it's a commercial promotional event. It helps immeasurably to sell films, but it's hardly the Nobel prize.
I know I'm regarded as an establishment figure, but I was crucified by the establishment for 'Oh! What a Lovely War', 'Gandhi' and 'Cry Freedom.'
