Patrick Macnee Quotes (22 Quotes)


    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.

    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.

    And there was a very famous man called Michael Powell, who probably is the greatest director all round, except possibly a couple of men.

    No, I was working in Canada. In fact, the man who asked me to be in The Avengers, I told him, what do I need to be in that, I'm a producer now.

    It was male chauvinism, as you must realize, in the 1960s, particularly in the entertainment business, which was pretty repulsive.


    But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.

    It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

    We were the first people in popular television to make the woman an equal partner with the man. You won't believe that, but I promise you it's true.

    And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

    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.

    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 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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

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

    I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.

    I was producing a series about Sir Winston Churchill, about which I was extremely proud, and earning a lot of money as a producer.

    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.

    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 only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.

    Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.


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