A biography for Nigel Hawthornehasn’t been written yet.
“I had my doubts about 'Yes, Prime Minister' being successful in the U.S. because your system of government is so different than ours. But the show does seems to have a very good audience in the states.”
“As the years have gone by, I have become more confident, but I'm still not completely at ease with myself.”
“I don't want to hear that Harry Belafonte is out there. It forces me not to see the audience as an anonymous mass.”
“In America, people come up to me and say, 'Hi, Sir Humph!'”
“I really ran away in 1951 from South Africa, where I lived with my mother and father - who was a doctor - to come back to England to find myself, then hide what I found.”
“As an actor I don't like to keep things the same.”
“I was quite a plain boy. I stayed in work and eeked out a living, bit parts on TV, walk-ons in films, repertory companies.”
“People still talk about 'Yes, Minister.' Americans, too; they love it. It was a happy period for me and it did change my life.”
“I live in the country, and I have a very happy life. I just do the job and go home.”
“I know people say plays are only an evening's entertainment. But you can make it mean a lot to the audience, even a farce or comedy.”
“I had no financial support from my parents, but, I suppose, I did have moral support - although they really didn't know what was going on.”
“I'm somebody who has a paucity of confidence as a person.”
“One of the things about George III is that he was aware that the monarchy was slipping away. There was revolution in the air all over Europe. Because of the unpopularity of his predecessors, one of the things he wanted to do was to establish some sort of credibility to the monarchy.”
“I'm very pernickety about cast and make-up. Continuity things can go dreadfully wrong in film; the beards are different, red waistcoats become blue.”
“Jennifer Aniston was a lovely girl, very unspoilt.”
“My father was a doctor. I've never been very warm towards doctors.”
“One advantage of doing Lear at 70 is that you don't have to play an old man.”
“My whole career has been a struggle for dignity and justification, to prove that I'd made the right decision to be an actor in the first place.”
“The monarchy has almost always been unpopular.”
“I've been a homosexual all my life. My partner and I don't want to stand up and say we're gay, because we think that's wrong.”