Quotes

When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.

[replying to a cable from Laurence Olivier at the height of the Cleopatra (1963) scandal: "Make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want to be a great actor or a household word?"] Both.

I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning.

My father considered that anyone who went to chapel and didn't drink alcohol was not to be tolerated. I grew up in that belief.

[in 1963, about adultery] The minute you start fiddling around outside the idea of monogamy, nothing satisfies anymore.

I've played the lot: a homosexual, a sadistic gangster, kings, princes, a saint, the lot. All that's left is a Carry On film. My last ambition.

I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.

My father said all actors were homosexuals. That is nonsense, of course. But perhaps most actors are latent homosexuals and we cover it with drink. I was a homosexual once, but not for long. But I tried it. It didn't work so I gave it up. (1975)

I rather like my reputation, actually, that of a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womanizer; it's rather an attractive image.

You may be as vicious about me as you please. You will only do me justice.

[asked why he refused to see his performance in Cleopatra (1963)] Well, I don't want to kill myself.

The only thing in life is language. Not love. Not anything else.

All I wanted to do was to live, pick up a new Jag, and act at the Old Vic.

All great art comes from people who are either ugly or have a terrible inferiority complex. I know no one who is beautiful and produces art.

[about Elizabeth Taylor] Elizabeth has great worries about becoming a cripple because her feet sometimes have no feeling in them. She asked if I would stop loving her if she had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. I told her that I didn't care if her legs, bum and bosoms fell off and her teeth turned yellow. And she went bald. I love that woman so much sometimes that I cannot believe my luck. She has given me so much.

[about his love of reading] Home is where the books are.

[about being hired to play Marc Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963)] Well, I suppose I must don a breastplate once more to play opposite Miss Tits.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] At thirty-four she is an extremely beautiful woman, lavishly endowed by nature with a few flaws in the masterpiece: She has an insipid double chin, her legs are too short and she has a slight potbelly. She has a wonderful bosom, though.

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.

Richard Burton is now my epitaph, my cross, my title, my image. I have achieved a kind of diabolical fame. It has nothing to do with my talents as an actor. That counts for little now. I am the diabolically famous Richard Burton.

An actor is something less than a man, while an actress is something more than a woman.

Certainly most movie executives were making love to the starlets. But then, so were most of us actors.

[in 1974] I was up to, I'm told, because, of course, you don't remember if you drink that much, about two-and-a-half to three bottles of hard liquor a day. Fascinating idea, of course, drink on that scale. It's rather nice to have gone through it and to have survived.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] The most astonishingly self-contained, pulchritudinous, remote, removed, inaccessible woman I had ever seen.

[on Frankie Howerd] If I had his talent, I'd drop Shakespeare tomorrow.

[on Staircase (1969)] I believe in this film absolutely. It is a kick against the system.

[in 1962] And I'm too old. I'm now thirty-six. And I look about 5'2". I'm 5'10" but I look smaller. It's because I'm so wide or my head's too big or something.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] I love her, not for her breasts, her buttocks or her knees but for her mind. It is inscrutable. She is like a poem.

[on Sophia Loren] She is as beautiful as an erotic dream. Tall and extremely large-bosomed. Tremendously long legs. They go up to her shoulders, practically. Beautiful brown eyes, set in a marvelously vulpine, almost satanic, face.

[in 1984] I still smoke too much. I think it gives my voice an edge.

(on Julie Andrews, his co-star in "Camelot"] Every man I know who knows her is a little bit in love with her.

I almost replaced Sean Connery as James Bond in Thunderball (1965). This was before Sean played Bond. My friend, the Irish producer Kevin McClory, wanted me. Kevin worked for Mike Todd on Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and I was impressed with his Irish rebelliousness. We Welsh have that, too, but not quite like the Irish, who transfuse it into their blood on the same day they are born. McClory promised [Alfred Hitchcock] would direct and I had great hopes for the project. It fell through, of course - and later Kevin made a bloody fortune, when Sean was Bond. I wonder sometimes how it might all have turned out. [Ian Fleming] was big on me for the role. Stewart Granger was next in line.

I'm a reader, you know. I was corrupted by Faust. And [William Shakespeare]. And Marcel Proust]. And ]Ernest Hemingway]. But mostly I was corrupted by Dylan Thomas. Most people see me as a rake, womanizer, boozer and purchaser of large baubles. I'm all those things depending on the prism and the light. But mostly I'm a reader. Give me Agatha Christie for an hour and I'm happy as a clam. The house in Celigny some day will cave in under its own weight from the books. I hope I'm there when it does. One hundred six years old. Investigating the newest thriller from [John le Carré] or a new play from Tennessee Williams.

I played a sex-drenched doctor in The Bramble Bush (1960). It was the worst picture I ever made, if you don't count Ice Palace (1960). That one was based upon a very weak novel by Edna Ferber. Both pictures for Warner Brothers. Jack L. Warner told the press I had no sex appeal. Then Elizabeth came along. All changed after that. Suddenly, Eddie Fisher didn't have sex appeal. And I did. It's a crazy world for a Welsh coal miner's son born in November 1925.

Albert Finney is the greatest actor in the world. Then Peter O'Toole. [Marlon Brando]. [Laurence Olivier] and [John Gielgud] belong to another time and place. They're immortal, but remote from the rest of us. Sean Connery is vastly underrated. I would like to do a play with Michael Caine, whom I respect. I like Alan Bates. Frank Finlay is a hard man to follow in the second act. Unbeatable self-discipline.

[on Alexander the Great (1956)] I knew all epics are crap but I felt this one could be different. How could I have been so wrong?

God put me on this earth to raise sheer hell.

Once you have a drink problem, you always have one. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. But, er, I'm not quite sure whether I am one or not. I think I'm within striking distance of being one. (1977)

The unfortunate thing is that everyone wants me to play a prince or a king ... I'm always wearing a nightdress or a short skirt or something odd. I don't want to do them, I don't like them, I hate getting made up for them, I hate my hair being curled in the mornings, I hate tights, I hate boots, I hate everything. I'd like to be in a lounge suit, I'd like to be a sort of Welsh Rex Harrison and do nothing except lounge against a bar with a gin and tonic in my hand. (1963)

I am the son of a Welsh miner and one would expect me to be at my happiest playing peasants, people of the earth. But in actual fact I'm much happier playing princes and kings. Now whether this is a kind of sublimation of what I would like to be, or something like that, I don't know, but certainly I'm never really very comfortable playing people from the working class. (1967)

If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it. I keep telling Larry Olivier that. I chided Olivier for playing a minor role in an epic like Spartacus (1960), which he's just done. Larry had a dressing room half the size of Tony Curtis' in that film. And he got about half Curtis' money. Well, that's ridiculous. You've got to swank in Hollywood. When I go there I demand two Cadillacs - one for my family - and the best dressing room in the studio. Of course I'm not worth it, but it impresses them.

Rubbish ... tastelessly sentimental and badly acted by me. - On The Robe (1953)

As the seventh son of a Welsh miner I knew hardship first hand. I come from the lower depths of the working class. It's true that I now earn one and a quarter of a million dollars per picture, and it sounds strange to say that at heart I am a Communist, but there is no contradiction because I don't exploit others.

It seems fairly ridiculous for someone of forty-five or fifty to be learning words written by other people, most of which are bad, to make a few dollars.

I'm not dedicated, I never was. In a sense I'm totally alienated from the craft that I employ so superficially and successfully. (1970)

I get increasingly disenchanted with acting ... as the years totter past I find it ludicrous, learning some idiot's lines in the small hours of the night so I can stay a millionaire. (1972)

One big picture is worth ten small ones. The actor who is fortunate enough to get two or possibly three big subjects a year benefits from their long runs. He's never absent long from public view.

My real interest in life is the theatre, and I think I've shot my bolt in London as far as the classical roles are concerned. I've played all the parts I think I can play, and one or two that I should have given a miss. But there is nothing left until I'm older and can play parts like Lear. (1957)

Actors go through cycles - remarkable, weird cycles. There was one period from 1956 to 1961 or so when I couldn't do anything right. My voice went foul, my luck was bad, I chose badly. I thought I had lost what I had, and I nearly retired right then and there.