"One of the luckiest things that ever happened to me was to be born with a desperate desire to become an actor. I never remember at any age wanting to be anything else." "it was weird. I just thought I'd been wasting my time for the past 55 years learning all these millions of lines, and then getting an Oscar for not speaking." - referring to his Academy Award-winning role as a brain-damaged mute in "Ryan's Daughter" (1970) "'Ryan's Daughter' is not my best film, but it is the best thing that happened to me, professionally. It brought me the Academy Award, and that meant I could finally be known again as somebody other than Hayley Mills's father."