Richard Attenborough

“I always wanted to make films that might change or at least focus people's views.”

“I think there were times when, if circumstances had developed, I might have been tempted into politics. I am a fan of Tony Blair. I think Gordon Brown is a fine man, but I think he's headed for one hell of a bloody struggle.”

“In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.”

“I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.”

“The problem is, you see, I've just got so many subjects I want to direct.”

“'E.T.' depended absolutely on the concept of cinema, and I think that Steven Spielberg, who I'm very fond of, is a genius.”

“If someone does something in an entertainment/pop ambience, that person becomes someone who has an impact on the conduct and attitude of a huge number of people who peripherally come in contact with them.”

“My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.”

“I'm 4 ft. 2 in. and not exactly a matinee idol.”

“I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.”

“I prefer fact to fiction.”

“If you are playing in 'Charley's Aunt,' and your favourite aunt died that lunchtime, you'll still have to go on the stage and play 'Charley's Aunt.'”

“At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.”

“There are things I want to say: They are very important to me, and, not being a writer, I do it through movies.”

“I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.”

“Throughout my life, I always remember that consideration of people who were less fortunate than we. We lived in an atmosphere of awareness, and we certainly did not live a life whereby we ignored, or felt that we could ignore, that which was in evidence around us.”

“I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.”

“David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.”

“Irreverence is an essential part of our culture.”

“I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.”