- On the fact that he is mostly known as his The Prisoner (1967) character, Number Six: "Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a Number."
- [on Rafferty (1977)] a disaster ... the most miserable job I've ever done in my life ... a total frustration from start to finish ... The scripts [were] monstrous pieces of garbage, [with] no time to rewrite them ... There were too many people in charge and all passing the buck. I counted them. There were 11 people who thought that they were the 'creators' of this load of garbage. But you couldn't find one to take responsibility [when it failed].
- The more intense the work, the happier that I am.
- I always had this fascination with the man in isolation, against the bureaucracy, against society, and also I've always had the constant fear that we're becoming a numeralised society more and more, and that for the individual, the rebel, shall we say the 'arrogant individual' to survive and keep his self respect, there has to be a certain amount of fighting against the system.
- They don't quite - they think there's something in the background there that needs to be dug up. That it's not true that I've been married for thirty years and that I can't have a happy family because there is a reputation that I have for being a rebel. A reputation for being arrogant.
- No one is a free man, unfortunately. No man is an island. But you've jolly well got to try, though. (laughs)
- Certainly I am self-conscious, trip over my own feet and so on. In company I tend to hide. Though I can get laughs onstage easily enough, I can never tell jokes in conversation.
- It is unforgivable not to know your lines. [Outside acting, however] I just react to circumstances. I have few constant habits there.
- If people in Hollywood want to get divorced, married, divorced, married, that's their business. Their problem. I have no problems like that.
- For me there must be an edge, a tension about life. Otherwise I don't get the best out of things. I can never be content to remain still - and I am not just talking about acting. Once you say to yourself everything is very nice - that's death. I like working at high pitch. Frustration and slowness are what I loathe. They give me a real physical pain in the stomach.
- I enjoy working. I like being totally absorbed. I am scared of drifting, of having nothing to do.
- If my daughter were to take drugs, it would be my fault, not hers. I would not have given her the security or principles to live by, I would blame myself absolutely!
- Boredom and loneliness, damaging in any circumstances, become totally destructive to those who are insecure in their private lives.
- I've made many films, but most of them have been rubbish. I've rarely liked anything I've done, apart from my work as John Drake and two films I made for Walt Disney, Dr Syn and The Three Lives of Thomasina.
- I abhor violence and cheap sex. I believe in romance. Casual sex destroys romance. Besides, it is my view that a hero be a good man.
- I was shy, gangling and clumsy when I finished school.
- [on turning down the role of James Bond] I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence. It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn't see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.
- Oddly, the one thing I found I could pick up quickly, without endangering my dignity by revealing anything so despicable as trying, was maths. This small hint of promise was noticed and a year later, to everyone's delight but mine, I was selected for a free place to yet another school, the Catholic Public School, Ratcliffe College, in Leicester. The uniform lists arrived, demanding more clothes for me than the entire family possessed.
- Why must our heroes die? Don't we want them? These men [the Kennedys and Martin Luther King] were heroes. They're dead - and there are no replacements.
- [on his first role] [An actor fell ill] so they shoved me on. [It felt good.] But nerve-wracking. Scary. I'm always scared. It's a scary world. You have to be nervous. I don't want to be placid about my work.
- She [Joan Drummond] was a glowing sunburnt-to-mahagony girl with black hair and dark eyes. I found her overwhelming and fascinating.
- My father did not take to the pace of New York. He farmed in Ireland, in country Leitrim, the poorest county in Ireland. Its only export is people. He made the farm go for eight years and they emigrated again, this time to England.
- Virility plus masculinity do not add up to promiscuity! In a fair fight Drake would beat Bond anytime.
- I've married my first wife and my last wife!
- Call me prissy Pat. A lot of old horse is being written about my attitude toward TV, but it can be summed up in a few simple words. I see TV as the third parent. It doesn't give you bulging muscles to say a four-letter word. The love life planned for John Drake would have made me some sort of sexual crank. Every week a different girl? Served up piping hot for tea? With the children and grannies watching?
- When we started Danger Man the producer wanted me to carry a gun and to have an affair with a different girl each week. I refused. I am not against romance on television, but sex is the antithesis of romance. Television is a gargantuan master that all sorts of people watch at all sorts of time, and it has a moral obligation towards its audience.
- I'm not a tough guy and I'm not a beast. I'm soft-hearted, gentle and understanding. I don't even beat my wife.
- We've seen just about everything. The only thing left is for someone to walk about and urinate through the screen. They'd say this is just life, a documentary on urination!
- I'm an insomniac. I sleep four hours maximum. I get up at 2:30 A.M. I read or write, and then I'm out of the house to walk on the beach. It's lonely then, just people with their dogs and some surfers. I walk, and talk to the dogs.
- I've sometimes been accused of being difficult and edgy and complicated, but only because I want the end product to be as perfect as possible.
- A man must create pressure in his working life; something to which he can respond, and must overcome.
- I'm not particularly ambitious to be a film star or to earn millions. Being a film star is probably one of the most confining occupations in the world. The last word I would associate with it is "freedom". And freedom in my work and in my private life is something I have always wanted.
- When an actor has a leading part, it is all the more necessary for him to be more disciplined.
- As the knight Sir Oswald, with only two lines to say, I was entitled to a Rolls Royce transport between home and studio and a place in the restaurant with the hierarchy and stars - on a peasant's pay. Another actor, as the leader of the peasants, had a huge part. But because he was a 'peasant' he had to eat with the peasants and come to work under his own steam - on a knight's salary. The whole thing was ridiculous.
- I certainly believe in a God, but I don't go around waving a flag about it.
- I have two guiding lights before me, every second of my working day. The first is my daughters. The second, my religion. You know, every hero since Jesus Christ has been moral... Like John Drake, he fought his battles fiercely but honourably.
- [on working on a chicken farm after leaving school] I was happier then than I ever had been. My idea of the good life was a bucket full of chicken meal and a couple of dozen broody hens clucking contentedly around my feet. The fact was I'd almost become like one of them. I was cock of the walk ruling my own little roost.
- My father couldn't read or write, but he played the violin like an angel and he had total recall. We would read to him, he'd ask us what page we were on and days later he'd refer to the material on that page number.
- I abhor the word 'star'. It makes the hair on the back of my neck want to curl up.
- [on the then recently-enacted bill legalising homosexuality] Homosexuals are a fact of society. It was a progressive and very humane bill.
- [shrugging off his literary efforts, despite the fact that he has written "hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands" of poems over the years] I don't really call them poetry, I call them scrambled words. It's just a positive way to start the day. [Nor is he interested in publishing his works; indeed, the suggestion makes him recoil.] They're all sort of obscure and personal.
- [The Prisoner was inspired by] anyone who has ever been up against bureaucracy, in any form, or up against prejudices.
- My father had 10 shillings in one pocket and a change of collar in the other [when he and McGoohan's mother emigrated to the US].
- Doctors are important. But plumbers are even more important. And garbage collectors. If plumbers and garbage collectors go on strike, that's when we need doctors.
- My wife, Joan, and I are getting remarried next Saturday. A re-affirmation. When we got married 26 years ago, over in England, we were too busy for a church ceremony. I was rehearsing for Petruchio in 'Taming of the Shrew', and Joan was playing Ophelia. I said to Joan, 'I promise you a white weddin' some time, but not now'.
- [on Ice Station Zebra (1968) I hear it was Howard Hughes' favourite film in his last days. That must be its only claim to fame.
- [on 007] I don't regret rejecting Bond, although I dare say I'd be a millionaire and a 'star' if I'd taken it.
- [on his 1984 return to the stage] I'm looking forward to seeing how I do on the boards after 26 years. Spies must be actors, too. Do you suppose we share the same stage fright?"
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