Patrick Macnee

“The very first thing you learn if you're a gentleman is that you never compare one woman to another. That's the way of all death.”

“Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.”

“I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?”

“I'm not surprised 'The Avengers' has such enduring popularity, because it was a groundbreaking series that changed television. It was the first show that put its leading man and leading lady on an equal footing and showed a woman fighting and kicking and throwing men around. That was a radical departure in its time.”

“I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.”

“I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.”

“Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.”

“I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.”

“I really think I'd have enjoyed the life of a Regency buck.”

“Linda Thorson was a great actress with a great body, but she arrived just as 'The Avengers' was losing its appeal.”

“These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.”

“I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.”

“I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.”

“I'd grown up with a lot of women. My mother was a famous lesbian in the '20s and '30s, and I grew up with only women, so I was used to getting on with them.”

“I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you're an actor, you know, don't really need to learn how to do it.”

“And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.”

“They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.”

“Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.”

“So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.”

“The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.”