Christopher Plummer

“I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.”

“Most actors come from the streets, and their rise to fame is guided by a natural anger. It was harder to find that rage coming from a gentle background.”

“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.”

“I would rather not know about how one gets parts in movies these days.”

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

“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'm used to big roles and lots of words.”

“The first time my father saw me in the flesh was on the stage, which is a bit weird. We went out to dinner, and he was charming and sweet, but I did all the talking.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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'm insatiably ambitious.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Never forget your sense of humour.”

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

“My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.”

“In Montreal, when I grew up, I'd go to the Notre-Dame Basilica, a gorgeous cathedral in town. I'd listen to huge symphony orchestras, Pavarotti singing operas; that was absolutely marvelous. I like that aspect of the cathedral, the spectacle.”

“I hate turbulence in life, but also on planes.”