It came as a great shock to me when I heard that England and Soviet Russia had become allies. So much so that I thought that the people responsible in London were acting in a manner that no longer coincided with British imperial interests.
If you look at the British royal family and take away the scandals and the goofy stuff that's going on, people love to have this king to look up to - the royals are like celebrities.
I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.
Growing up in a Canadian household that was more British than Big Ben, I dreamed of flying to England myself and visiting the places my family never tired of talking about. I always woke up before the plane landed.
I think Bond the character is distinct: He's British, he has a certain code that he lives by, he's incorruptible... he's a classical hero, but he's also fallible. He has inner demons, inner conflicts, and he's a romantic.
As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.
The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.
Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it's sunny, the next day it's raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine.
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania.
Give the Germans five deutschmarks and they will save it. But give the British £5 and they will borrow £25 and spend it.
I love that pre-mod jazz look of the late Fifties, the Steve McQueen style that influenced the British modernists.
I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.
British people are surprised that I'm British!
Most British people are keen to remain in a European free trade zone; and most EU states are keen to keep us there, because we buy from them more than we sell to them to the tune of £40 million per day.
The 'Robben Island Bible' has arrived at the British Museum. It's a garish thing, its cover plastered with pink and gold Hindu images, designed to hide its contents. Within is the finest collection of words generated by human intelligence: the complete works of William Shakespeare.
If pressed, I would say I feel British. It's where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don't feel like a tourist or anything.
American actors are all muscular, tanned, white teeth and they have this indestructible confidence. We British are all... Dare I say it? Pessimistic.
It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.
I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.
It is absolutely bedrock to the British Army's philosophy that a commanding officer is responsible for what goes on within his command.
The actors I respect are the real character actors, who are the real chameleon actors that completely change from role to role. I love Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. They tend to be British, I guess. People who really disappear and transform, I really like that.
I stand on my public record as a defender of the human rights of Muslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other British Muslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
I don’t think the United States has done anything whatsoever to merit any criticism by the British.
Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.
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