Peter Sellers

“I might have got somewhere with 'The Ladykillers,' but forty minutes were cut. A lot of me was cut with that forty minutes.”

“I believe in astrology and the spirits. I'm a Virgo myself.”

“I'm a classic example of all humorists - only funny when I'm working.”

“Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.”

“I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up - a crashing sentimentalist who alternates between great heights and black depths.”

“Conversation like television set on honeymoon... unnecessary.”

“Dad was convinced always that I was going to be a road sweeper.”

“When I look at myself, I see a person who strangely lacks what I consider the ingredients of a personality.”

“Women are more difficult to handle than men. It's their minds.”

“I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.”

“I didn't always mean to be an actor. I was carried onto the stage when I was two days old, but I never acted as a child. My parents were stage people.”

“To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience.”

“When I am searching for a character, I leave myself open, as does a medium. And I think that sometimes you can be inhabited by the spirit of someone who lived at some time or who was a bit like the person you are doing. And maybe they come in and use you as a chance to relive again.”

“My mum very much wanted me to go into the theatre.”

“If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”

“Sometimes I felt glad not to be too close to people. I might have been happier, I suppose. On the other hand, I never had much luck with people over the years.”

“I try to hop into a new personality as often as I can.”

“It depends on whom I'm with. Sometimes I start out in my own voice, and no matter who I'm with, I take on their thing.”

“A person can destroy me with two words. It can just be the way they say them, the inflection.”

“I just cannot take mediocrity. I just cannot take it on any level.”