I turned down the first script offered to me, and the second. I lay on my back one day under an umbrella, in the garden, reading the third, and wondered why I had turned down the first.

My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home. It pleased mother, caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.

It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain. An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art. So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.

Looking back across the years, so many pictures flash on the screen of my memory that just as I begin to see one clearly, another slides in, blotting out the first, itself to be pushed aside by the next and the next and the next.

I was appalled at the amount of study necessary in order to qualify in medicine, and gradually my desire was blunted by a keener - and secret - wish to become an actor.

For me, half the joy of achieving has been the struggle and the fight, the pitting myself against the world and all its competition - and winning.

What use is there for a biography of myself? I'm just a movie actor.