Quotes

The joy of doing a play as an actor is that you've got that interaction with the audience and you're also your own editor. If I want to make a pause three quarters of an hour long, I can, whereas on television and film you've got an editor and if you feel there's a rhythm to a line and you want to say it that way, there's no guarantee it'll stay that way.

[on his audition for "Yellow Submarine"] The audition was quite interesting because I was asked to go and read for the part of George Harrison. I arrived at the offices in Soho Square and sat in the waiting room. There were a few other people there waiting to be seen. I was sitting next to two guys who were chatting, and after a few minutes the guy sitting next to me turned to me and asked what I was auditioning for. I told him it was George. He then asked if I knew The Beatles. I told him that although I hadn't known them in Liverpool, I had met Paul when he and his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher, had attended the premiere of the West End musical "Maggie May" that I was in. He then asked if there was anything particular about their accents. I explained that while Ringo and George had quite hard Liverpool accents, John and Paul's were much softer. They had what we call posh scouse accents. I explained that they had a tendency to have a rising inflection at the end of sentences and would also put the emphasis on the end of words, such as "interesting," where they would put the emphasis on "resting." Just then my name was called and I went in to see Al Brodax and John Coates. The guy I'd been chatting to followed me in and asked me to tell John and Al what I'd just told him. He turned out to be George Dunning, and I was asked to play Paul.