Quotes

I was called Sean long before I was an actor, I had an Irish buddy when I was twelve named Seamus -- 'pronounced Sha-mus'. So they nicknamed us Seamus and Shawn and it stuck.

I never disliked Bond, as some have thought. Creating a character like that does take a certain craft. It's simply natural to seek other roles.

More than anything else, I'd like to be an old man with a good face, like Hitchcock or Picasso.

I've honestly not been too aware of my age until I went to the doctor for a full check-up. He said I had the heart of a young man - 'but you're not young, you're 40.'

Some age, others mature.

I had never read Tolkien, and I didn't understand the script when they sent it to me. Bobbits? Hobbits? on turning down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.

I'm an actor - it's not brain surgery. If I do my job right, people won't ask for their money back.

I have always hated that damn James Bond. I'd like to kill him.

I've never kept a record of anything. I gave away everything: all the posters, the memorabilia that would have been helpful - and financially rewarding.

It's with me till I go in the box.

One of the things that strikes me is that no matter how difficult or underprivileged the situation you were living in as a child, it wasn't considered difficult. I don't think as children, you are aware of it. You have nothing to compare it to.

I care about Bond and what happens to him. You cannot be connected with a character for this long and not have an interest. All the Bond films had their good points.

I don't know who could be in favor of it, but it can't be stopped. It is inevitable.

I'm fed up with the idiots, the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and those who green light them. I don't say they're all idiots - I'm just saying there's a lot of them. It would almost need a Mafia-like offer I couldn't refuse to do another movie.

I said I never would [do an autobiography] and then I thought about it and I said, 'I'm going to do it'. Then I started. Yeah, and it cost me a stonking amount of money not to do it - because I'd already put the wheels in motion. He [Davies] started to run with the ball with all this stuff. I realized I was going to be spending the best part of my life, and probably the rest of my life, trying to correct these inaccuracies and I can't be bothered.

Craig's a great choice, really interesting - different. He's a good actor. It's a completely new departure. -On Daniel Craig

I thought Pierce Brosnan was a good choice. I liked GoldenEye (1995). Timothy Dalton never got a handle on the role. He took it seriously in the wrong way. The person who plays Bond has to be dangerous. If there isn't a sense of threat, you can't be cool.

I think the fact that one's hair disappeared early made it easier. I never had a 'transition problem'. I've always played older. I played Harrison Ford's father and Dustin Hoffman's father. And this year, I'm going to be sixty-five. I'm hardly going to get into a weight program and do "Tarzan". I could have the best body sculpting in the world, but I'm never going to be James Bond again.

Apparently the Bronx at one time was a very substantial neighborhood. They used to have the Yankee Stadium and the other one was called the The Polo Grounds.

Dealing with this financial stuff was too much for me.

Europe is completely reassembling. Scotland has as much importance in Europe and certainly in Asia and round the world.

Every time you open a Pandora's Box it's difficult to put the lid back on.

I did smoke pot a few times but nothing else. I would never inject. I'm too fond of the drink. I can go two weeks or more without it, but then I'm quite enthusiastic to get back to the taste again.

I don't consider myself militant but I have the advantage of having worked in most countries and continents of the world.

I don't know anything about baseball.

I don't understand if you get caught in a fight, but take it out on a room, how that implies some psychiatric disorder.

I have always hated that damn James Bond. I'd like to kill him.

I haven't found anywhere in the world where I want to be all the time. The best of my life is the moving. I look forward to going.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

I left Scotland when I was 16 because I had no qualifications for anything but to join the Navy, having left school at 13.

I like to be in France, but I have no facility for languages.

I love the idea they would rather have had another Louis there than Mitterand.

I moved out of Britain in 1975. I must have rubbed up the wrong way quite a lot of people.

I never trashed a hotel room or did drugs.

I pay tax wherever I work. The only difference with my situation is I'm resident in the Bahamas. Everywhere I work I pay the tax.

I think the greatest disservice done was Thatcher with the Poll Tax. What do you think would happen if they did that in France? It's unthinkable.

I unfortunately don't speak French, but my wife is now fluent in English, which really reflects rather badly on me.

I volunteered to join the Navy for 12 years. If you get your calling up papers, you did it. It's like a Police State, and don't let anyone kid you it would be different.

I was born in Edinburgh. Everything round my home has been almost erased.

I went up to Scotland and made a documentary on shipyards. I did a month up there, appeared in it and directed it.

I'm optimistic that there's a movement towards Independence. It's addressed all the time between the two major parties that the Labour party will give an Assembly to devolution in Scotland.

Initially all the qualities and values that Thatcher presented in her initial regime were almost a direct reflection on the best of the Scottish characteristics. And she was cast out when she gave the Poll Tax here to the Scots.

It doesn't matter where the job is, the moment you have any sort of privilege, there's a great reluctance to give it up.

It's a kind of madness in cosmopolitan cities now.

It's rather sad Scotland isn't on a par with France.

Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.

Only 4 percent of all the companies owned in Scotland have their head offices in Scotland.

The democratic principle of the country is rushing to recognise Croatia before they've even resolved any problems there. We should sort it out at home first.

The French have a Celtic link with the Scots and the Irish. The French, with their food and their language, are much more sophisticated, much more developed.

The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots.

The Labour Party's history was that they gave their independence to all the Empire and Commonwealth.

The Tories come up here and threaten everybody's work, everybody's life force. They just say, We'll just move everything out if you don't come our way.

There's a lot of fantasy about what Scotland is, and the shortbread tins and that sort of thing.

There's a spirit in Scotland which is rather sad because there's 20 million Scots in America, and possibly 25 to 30 percent of the Presidents of the United States are descended from Scots.

There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

These Scottish MPs in London sound English. Anybody who has a Scottish accent is made aware of it instead of it being perfectly acceptable.

They say there's a million guns out there that they cannot account for. And Scotland has the worst drug situation in Europe. Everybody knows where it is and they're powerless to do anything.

This chap was trying to go on about the next phase in school and he had a very pronounced Scottish accent. There's a big failing when these kids in school get a complex because they talk like that.

To cultivate an English accent is already a departure away from what you are.

We don't have the bridge between America and Scotland that Ireland has with America, and that's a real drawback.

We have to go back to the source of the oil. There was no question, there was an abundance. In a normal evolutionary sense, the oil question has to be addressed.

We see what's happened in Russia where, after 70 years of Communism, the kind of chaos that's going on there.

We've always been an island, and isolated. A lot of the attitude in Scotland is, they're not made to feel entitled.

When you hear someone from the very north of Scotland speaking, I think its nice, very musical and harmonious.

You're encouraged to buy a car. They give you a road tax and places to park, and you must put a coin in. If you stay there any length of time, you're not allowed to feed the meter. If you can't get back to your car, they put a clamp on the car.

Your background and environment is with you for life. No question about that.

What happened was that I had polyps on my vocal cords for about six years. I had them lasered off each time. But then I had a little twinge of a problem while I was doing Rising Sun (1993). I couldn't get the timbre of my voice right. I couldn't get the variation and enunciation as comfortable as I wanted. So I went back to the doctor and he suggested radiation. I went for six weeks and didn't have any side effects or problems. Then I made the announcement that I had done radiation treatment. The publicists said not to do it, that it would set off an explosion. But I thought, if you do radiation and it's a success, why not speak about it?

It was a nightmare. The director should never have been given $185 million.

I have retired for good. It's been a bit rough since Christmas but I'm perfectly OK and I feel well. In fact, I'm working on a history book.

One of the reasons I stopped doing it was because I got really fed up with the space stuff and special effects. I just found it getting more and more influential in the movies.

Though my feet are tired, my heart is not.

I had no grand plan. Everyone talks about how they knew the Bond films were going to be a success, but it simply isn't true.

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