Nominate a Biography: actors' quotes
Ewan McGregor
"Natural Nylon points the possible way forward for Ewan McGregor - a close-knit group of actors taking charge of their own destinies and fashioning their own tailor-made projects. Moreover, the fact that Natural Nylon aims to remain in London, backing British films, looks a heartening sign for home-grown film production." p.196
Choose life: Ewan McGregor and the British film revival, by Xan Brooks, 1998.
Christopher Lee
"My good cheer gradually ebbed away as I remarked that one great piece after another had gone missing. Cuts are unavoidable, but some of these seemed like amateur butchery. …
… The negatives and out-takes should have been in the vaults of British Lion. Or possibly in the labs where film is processed. Or they could have been in the catacombs of Shepperton. Every place we went to denied all knowledge. Some suggested they were in cans with wrong labels; others suspected cans with no labels.
Peter Snell spent months investigating. Finally, he ended up near Shepperton, standing by a hollow which had been filled in for the new road. At the bottom of the hole, he learned, were the cans of more than three hundred movies thought to be obsolete. Among them, he was assured, were those of The Wicker Man . It wouldn't surprise me." p.307-8
Lord of misrule: the autobiography of Christopher Lee, 2000.
Saeed Jaffrey
"One would have thought that the marvellous reviews would have earned Masala a place at the Indian Film Festival. But, no it didn't. 'It might offend some people was the excuse.' They had also refused to show My Beautiful Laundrette in 1986 - a world-winner and a cult classic - at the Hyderabad Indian Film Festival because they were afraid that the homosexual relationship between Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke, who was playing a British-born Muslim, might offend the Muslims of Hyderabad. … But justice prevails in the end, I've always found. In 1997 My Beautiful Laundrette was shown by the Hong Kong-based Star Movies several times, earning for itself millions of fans not only in India but all over Asia! I hope a similar fate awaits Masala. Amen. Insha Allah. Touch Wood." p.252
Saeed: an actor's journey, by Saeed Jaffrey, 1998.
Alec Guinness
"What you watched and anticipated in Alec's performances were a great magician's transformations which were breathtakingly complete because they happened from the inside."
From Alec Guinness: the unknown: a life, by Gary O'Connor, p405
