Michael Bates was a very funny actor; he'd served in India, could speak Urdu, and had great comic timing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
For any actor, being part of a Mani Ratnam film is a great experience. I grew up watching his films.
The idea of working with Steven Spielberg was very attractive. He's such a master. He knows the language of the camera and of filmmaking, which gives him a great freedom.
I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.
Working with Chaplin was very amusing and strange. His films are so funny, but working with him, I found him to be a very serious man. Whereas the films of Hitchcock are macabre, he could be a very funny man to work with, always telling jokes and holding court. Of course, when I worked with Charlie he was getting older.
Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.
Christopher Reeve did such an amazing job that to give him some kind of accent or more bravado would have been wrong. Audiences wouldn't have responded to that either.
Any good actor has to have a good sense of humour, too; they have to be able to manipulate people.
Any comic is a very good actor. Look at Don Rickles. He is saying the same joke every night for 20 years and making it look like he just thought of it.
Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians.
Jonathan Lynn is one of the last actors Orsen Welles used in a production. It was wonderful. He's very sharp, very sharp. It's funny I've been asked how weird it was to have a Brit do a church gospel movie.