I doubt anyone in Hollywood has had more 'dates' than me.

You asked me my favorite question: What happened and what did you learn from being under contract to MGM? And the answer is I know how to make movies. I understand how to do that. I've been doing that my whole life. It's just easier to raise the money yourself and then hire yourself. It's possible if you reduce your own budget a little.

At MGM there was a script cage in the basement where they’d show rushes. And I thought to myself, “How do I get into the script cage and find out what my future is?” I climbed into the script cage one night and spent the whole night in there. I saw the bowels of MGM. I saw the studio scripts that the producers had seen; the writers had just handed them in. And I started thinking this is a chance to pick my own roles.

The first thing my agent told me in 1959 was he said you have to have something recognizable that people will remember. “What are you? Do you have cleft in your chin? You have a Jimmy Stewart kind of talk?” And I thought I don’t know what I can give them that will be different.

The midfield are like a chef, trying to prise open a stubborn oyster to get at the fleshy meat inside.

There are a lot of self important people who make you believe they're artistes and high on the intelligence quotient and I've sat down and listened to them and just been bored.

Once, as an experiment, I travelled around the world with a single suit. Before I left, I went to a tailor in Savile Row and asked him to make me a suit that I could wear in any climate and which I could use as a tuxedo, a dinner jacket, a lounge suit and a blazer.