The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.
Any big televised event that starts at the crack of dawn is worth getting up for. I've done it all my life: big boxing matches, royal weddings, even TV-A.M.'s inaugural episode was enjoyed in pyjamas in my house.
I obviously wanted to play for the Kansas City Royals. (Laughter) I also knew that was far-fetched. The truth is I don't really know what I wanted to do.
I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved.
Instead of having to be a member of the Royal Society to do science, the way you had to be in England in the 17th, 18th, centuries today pretty much anybody who wants to do it can, and the information that they need to do it is there.
I was in King Lear with Sir Tom Courtenay at The Royal Exchange in Manchester. In fact, that's where I met my husband. I was playing Regan and he was playing Cornwall and together we fell in love plucking out Gloucester's eyes. It was great fun. Everyone assumes that I was Cordelia because I've got blonde hair but I was Regan and they gave me a long auburn wig. It was great, good fun.
In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne.
I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.
Often, one discovery leads to interest in another. After the Dauphin's heart had undergone DNA testing and was placed in the crypt at St. Denis, I think people wanted some closure to the story about the fate of the royal couple's only child who survived the gruesome Temple Prison. I know I did.
I just long for the day when I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lamp-posts.
Vienna is cold, and dark, and sad. It is laid out as though for a royal parade; the streets are wide and they're flanked by monumental buildings, decorated with the faces of angry gods. And on the roof are statues of national heroes, wielding weapons of destruction.
Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.
I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while.
When the Quaker Penn kept his hat on in the royal presence, Charles (King Charles II) politely removed his, explaining that it was the custom in that place for only one person at a time to remain covered.
I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as The Royal Variety Show, performing sketches opposite Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier.
There was no doubt that in the early and mid-eighties that many of us in broadsheet newspapers felt that we still had a responsibility to try to protect the Royal Family or if you like protect the Monarchy from the assaults of the media.
I was always involved in the arts from a young age. I started studying classical piano at age four as a student of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music.
I've done loads of things people have never seen, dramas on BBC4 and plays upstairs at the Royal Court and the Bush, and because I didn't go to drama school, they gave me an education.
I wanted to work in the arts. My dream come true would be to be an architectural historian and work with the royal palaces and all the fabulous art collections. But I'm not committed enough.
I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule -- and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.)
I should say, a piece of advice that was given to me very early on by the principle of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) which is where I went. When he auditioned me, he said, "Your speech, monologue, is fine. It's good. Yeah, I think you have ability but you're making it happen. Don't make it happen, let it happen." And that's a sort of subtle shift I think, as an actor.
When the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were growing up, that was at it's height and the War cemented that with photographs of the Royal Family having breakfast together and so on, by pinning their reputation so firmly on that particular issue.
Well I'm a very similar age to Prince Charles. I'm a year older than him. I was at university at the same time as him. I think in the sixties, like all the Royals, he really had very little impact on my life at all and he seemed, if anything a lot older in his attitudes.
My name, the McGregor name, my family's motto ... means royal is in my blood. That goes way back. So for [Aldo] to say he is the king and I am the joker, if this was a different time, I would invade his favela on horseback and kill anyone that was not fit to work. But we are in a new time. So I'll whoop his ass in July.
By 1914, the royal families of Europe were inbred to the point of pantomine. You feel about them as you do about koalas. Nothing so stupid has any right to exist on the planet. On the other hand, they are rather cute, and in grave danger of extinction due to their specialised needs.
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