Christopher Plummer

I was an only child, so I was very demanding. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I wasn't very pleasant.

A lot of people want to retire; I couldn't. You don't retire in our business. What, play golf and watch television? Oh, please.

I'm insatiably ambitious.

Never forget your sense of humour.

I think a lot of directors over the years have cast me because they see something of another generation in me: you know, certain people look like they've come from the 19th century. Because I have classical background I suppose that is more suitable to patriarchal roles and easily infuses them.

I didn't have to keep a bloody journal. It's terribly boring keeping a journal anyway. I hate it. You spend more time writing down life instead of living it.

Simon Pegg is terribly talented, very funny, such a delicious sense of humour.

Some of the best casts I've ever worked with have been dogs.

I actually was brought up by an Airedale. I don't really remember my parents, especially my mother. It was only the dog that I saw.

We used to listen to Lionel Barrymore do 'A Christmas Carol' on the radio long ago, and I like Reginald Owen, who played Scrooge in the first treatment for the screen. But my favorite Scrooge was Alastair Sim. He was enchanting, an absolutely beautiful performance.

I think of being ornate as a Victorian quality, little to do with Shakespeare. But even Dickens wasn't ornate; he wrote with flow and naturalism.

Here is Mike Wallace, who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early '50s. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too.

Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.

The part of Mike Wallace drew me to the movie because I thought, what an outrageous part to play.

In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.

I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.

They realized I was alive again, even though I was playing an old, dying sop.

It is a culture voice, but it is a very American culture voice, and I am very used to English culture voice. So I had to work like hell to flatten those R's.

When I was young, I played the piano and studied classical music and jazz. I wanted to be a concert pianist, and if I'd devoted myself to it, I could have been. But it would have been too much work and a very lonely life.

I've done a lot of pictures that are ensemble, and I've not always liked the people I was working with, but that doesn't make any difference because you do the job, and often it turns out to be a great ensemble even if you didn't particularly really like anybody.