“There’s always a hunger, when you’re young, to go from peak to peak and avoid the valleys.”
― Peter O’Toole
“There is a legend. And to protest is daft.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.”
― Peter O’Toole
“When I’m doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I’m doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Public crucifixion is no fun.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m the most gregarious of men and love good company, but never less alone when alone.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I woke up one morning to find I was famous. I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard, wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My favorite food from my homeland is Guinness. My second choice in Guinness. My third choice – would have to be Guinness.”
― Peter O’Toole
“If you can’t do something willingly and joyfully, then don’t do it.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My plumbing is no one’s business but my own.”
― Peter O’Toole
“The only thing I’ve ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Films were never in my budget. Didn’t occur to me till much later. I hoped for a long, good life, which I’ve had and I’m having as an actor. I didn’t expect the rest.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot!”
― Peter O’Toole
“I can now tell from the envelope whether or not it is a good script.”
― Peter O’Toole
“The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.”
― Peter O’Toole
“We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.”
― Peter O’Toole
“We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting, Pete, this is the beginning of a great adventure.”
― Peter O’Toole
“For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Acting is just being a man. Being human. Not forcing it.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My dad went at 86. A car killed him. He was crossing the road.”
― Peter O’Toole
“A rubber neck is a necessary part of equipment.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I had a son born to me when I was 50, and I thought, ‘He needs someone to bowl to him.’”
― Peter O’Toole
“There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I quite like being old.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I’ve shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.”
― Peter O’Toole
“It’s my job, it’s what I do, it’s what I’m on earth to do and it’s who I am.”
― Peter O’Toole
“The good parts are the people who don’t make do. They’re the interesting people. Lear doesn’t make do.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Actors have to stay optimistic. The moment we start thinking otherwise, we’re dead.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I have no memories I’m prepared to share with you.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I love working with young people which to me is a big kick.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I tell my children to avoid theatre and go into cinema and TV.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I was apprehensive about bringing off this Homer.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I wouldn’t mind being a lord.”
― Peter O’Toole
“If I’m not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can’t write a word.”
― Peter O’Toole
“It’s very inconvenient because every time I finish, let’s say, a chapter of a book, I think I’m going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I’ve buried him. I buried him last year.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Life turned out much better than I thought. I knew after a little while that I could act.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My dear sir, it haunted me for the rest of my life.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My own favorite is something called Rogue Male.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Where do I begin? I loved working with Kate Hepburn, which was one of the highlights of my life; Working with Richard Burton in Beckett was another great joy.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Writing is a kind of performing art, and I can’t sit down to write unless I’m dressed. I don’t mean dressed in a suit, but dressed well and comfortably and I have to be shaved and bathed.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I can’t stand light. I hate weather.”
― Peter O’Toole
“It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won’t come back.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I can make the best French toast.”
― Peter O’Toole
“The common denominator of all my friends is that they’re dead.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’ve stopped acting, but I don’t think I’ve finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare’s sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions.”
― Peter O’Toole
“When I work with young people, I grab energy from them by the handsful.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I love working with the young.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can’t be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one’s lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m not from the working class. I’m from the criminal class.”
― Peter O’Toole
“My father was a racetrack bookie.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I know nothing at all about women. They are an amazing, beautiful mystery.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I take whatever good part comes along.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Money is always a pressure.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I have my very own Oscar now to be with me until death us do part.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’ve played farce on the stage, but I have never played any sort of comedy on the screen.”
― Peter O’Toole
“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I have unqualified admiration for Brad Pitt.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I saw a man killed in front of my eyes just before my eighth birthday.”
― Peter O’Toole
“People talk about the ’60s, but they were merely a mass production of what the ’50s had begun.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Every three or four years, I’m hot again.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’ve done everything that’s possible to be done.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I love London.”
― Peter O’Toole
“No one should ever know where conduct ends and acting begins. Conduct unbecoming. That’s what acting is.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’ve never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m Irish. That means I’m Catholic. But, truth is, now I’m a retired Christian.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Right after I left drama school, I had a job.”
― Peter O’Toole
“In my day England, Scotland, Wales had 80 drama schools. There are none left. So there’s no training, no discipline.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Actors have given up their clout. Now decision making is in the hands of lighting men, designers, bankers, special-effects people. We need to cut that out and just go with the most able trained actors in the business.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Omar Sharif and I spent nine months in the desert, day after day for nine months.”
― Peter O’Toole
“It’s such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.”
― Peter O’Toole
“All the minor sports injuries you acquire over the years begin to multiply like flies when you get over 70.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I never found it easy to learn my lines. It was slog, slog, slog.”
― Peter O’Toole
“No one ever watched competitive swimming.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren’t bad things on which to ponder a few notions.”
― Peter O’Toole
“No one can take Jesus away from me. There’s no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace.”
― Peter O’Toole
“You know when you’ve found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.”
― Peter O’Toole
“A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, ‘Well, hang on buddy. I’ve done half a century of this.’”
― Peter O’Toole
“An Oscar is a symbol that is known in every corner of the world.”
― Peter O’Toole
“It’s a razor’s edge, a romance with an old man and a young woman.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I had a pretty hilariously gloomy few years in the ’70s.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m not a French singer.”
― Peter O’Toole
“I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star.”
― Peter O’Toole
“Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.”
― Peter O’Toole
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