- On getting his first role: I was three parts pissed. We were going to a party. And this bloke comes around and says: "Right. You're next. Have you seen the script?" And I got the leading part.
- [in 1988] My life has taken off - my life, my career - everything. I can honestly say I've never been happier. I'm walking around thinking any minute now, 25 tons of horseshit is going to fall on my head.
- Most dictators were short, fat, middle-aged and hairless. Besides Danny DeVito, there's only me to play them.
- My own mum wouldn't call me pretty.
- I've watched films and even forgotten I'm in them.
- You don't end up with a face like this if you're hard, do ya? This comes from having too much mouth and nothing to back it up with. The nose has been broken so many times.
- You reach a point where the cameo is the governor. You go in there for a couple of weeks, you're paid a lot of money, everybody treats you like the crown jewels, you're in and out, and if the film's a load of shit, nobody blames you, y'knowwhadimean. It's wonderful.
- The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Bros. (1993). It was a f**kin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks, their own agent told them to get off the set! F**kin' nightmare. F**kin' idiots.
- [on Robert De Niro] De Niro has only shown me kindness. He's a real friend. He's helped me shop for my wife's and my kids' Christmas presents. He's invited me round to meet his granny and he's come to my house for a pot-luck dinner. That really knocked my wife out. I think she was finally impressed with me.
- [on director Francis Ford Coppola] Coppola couldn't piss in a pot.
- [on Neil Jordan] I think Neil is a magician. And I believe in magic.
- [on the acting profession] I came into this business uneducated, dyslexic, 5ft 6in, cubic, with a face like a squashed cabbage and they welcomed me with open arms.
- I realized one day that men are emotional cripples. We can't express ourselves emotionally, we can only do it with anger and humor. Emotional stability and expression comes from women. When they have babies they say "hello, you're welcome" and they mean it. It is an emotional honesty.
- [on Method acting] Method is a load of bollocks.
- Acting is a lark but I'm trying to work less. They say: "Bob I know you're trying to retire but we've got a little swan song here which is the business..." and I get talked into it. The more you don't want to work, the more work you get. I want to be at home with the wife, but she doesn't want me to retire, she wants me out of the house.
- Family's all I've got. I've got money, yeah, but it's my family that I care about.
- It's funny, going in a pub now and there's no smoke. It may be healthier but it doesn't feel right. Even the beer tastes different.
- [in his last-ever interview in August 2012] My greatest pleasure in life is a completely appointment-less day with nothing to do. It means I can read a book, listen to the radio and do exactly as I wish. If you are going to do a film properly you have to give yourself completely to it. You can't slip in and slip out again. You give it the business. My diary now is free, completely free. That's the way I like it. I only do what I want to do.
- There was a time when people said, "You've got to speak like you don't, walk like you don't, be like you aren't." I said, "Ere, 'ang on, who am I? I'd be lost if I did that. I'd be disappearing. I'd be ectoplasm!".
- [on the best kiss of his life] With Natasha Richardson, God bless her, on The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish (1991). She got hold of me and kissed me like I've never been kissed before. I was gobsmacked.
- [on what song he would like played at his funeral] Play what you like, I won't be there.
- [asked why he did a much-maligned series of adverts for British Telecom] For 500,000 reasons, all of them with the Queen's head on.
- [on moving in middle-class circles] There are four types of reaction. They lock up the silver. They talk to you slowly like you're an idiot. They think Hamlet in a cockney accent is the funniest thing in the world. Or they tell you most of their friends are working class and some are even black.
- (On what he owes his parents) Confidence. My mum used to say to me, "If somebody doesn't like you, fuck 'em, they've got bad taste."
- (On which living person he despises the most) Tony Blair - he's done even more damage than Thatcher.
- (On his earliest memory) The face of a cat looking into my cot at my home in Finsbury Park.
- (On the most valuable lesson life has taught him) It's your life, live it your way.
- [on acting as taught by Lee Strasberg] That's bollocks! Like how to look busy. It's just looking busy, impressing the boss.
- Acting is like therapy, expressing the most extreme emotions and passions that a human being's capable of. Then inevitably tragedy hits your own life, and all your family and friends gather round quite sincerely and openly show their pain, share their grief and comfort each other. But you immediately click into acting mode, and you know that you're fucking acting.
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