Top 32 Quotes & Sayings by Patrick Macnee

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British actor Patrick Macnee.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Daniel Patrick Macnee was an English film and television actor. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, he began his acting career in Canada. Despite having some small film roles, Macnee spent much of his early career in playing small roles in American and Canadian television shows. In 1961, he landed the role of secret agent John Steed in the British television series The Avengers. The show was a success running for eight seasons from 1961 to 1969 and was revived in 1976 as The New Avengers. The show was a major breakthrough for Macnee and led to his roles in many films including This Is Spinal Tap and A View to a Kill as well as continuing to appear in both British and US television shows up until 2001.

British - Actor | February 6, 1922 - June 25, 2015

Source: Wikipedia

The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.

Patrick Macnee

And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.

Patrick Macnee

I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.

Patrick Macnee

If I was Sean Connery, I would have been macho.

Patrick Macnee

Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

Patrick Macnee

I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you're an actor, you know, don't really need to learn how to do it.

Patrick Macnee

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.

Patrick Macnee

I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?

Patrick Macnee

I'd grown up with a lot of women. My mother was a famous lesbian in the '20s and '30s, and I grew up with only women, so I was used to getting on with them.

Patrick Macnee

I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.

Patrick Macnee

I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.

Patrick Macnee

It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

Patrick Macnee

They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.

Patrick Macnee

I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round.

Patrick Macnee

Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.

Patrick Macnee

The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.

Patrick Macnee

These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.

Patrick Macnee

But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.

Patrick Macnee

I really think I'd have enjoyed the life of a Regency buck.

Patrick Macnee

Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

Patrick Macnee

Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.

Patrick Macnee

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

Patrick Macnee

So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.

Patrick Macnee

Retirement's the most wonderful thing. I get to enjoy all the things I never stopped to notice on the way up. After an extraordinary life, it's time to enjoy my retirement.

Patrick Macnee

Who'd give up sunny California for the grey old Earls Court Road? I'm looking out at blue skies and the mountains and trees, and it's so beautiful.

Patrick Macnee

I'm not surprised 'The Avengers' has such enduring popularity, because it was a groundbreaking series that changed television. It was the first show that put its leading man and leading lady on an equal footing and showed a woman fighting and kicking and throwing men around. That was a radical departure in its time.

Patrick Macnee

I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.

Patrick Macnee

Linda Thorson was a great actress with a great body, but she arrived just as 'The Avengers' was losing its appeal.

Patrick Macnee

The very first thing you learn if you're a gentleman is that you never compare one woman to another. That's the way of all death.

Patrick Macnee

And there was a very famous man called Michael Powell, who probably is the greatest director all round, except possibly a couple of men.

Patrick Macnee

The strange thing about the English character is that they understate everything. It's considered bad form to comment on the food, money, romance, any of those things. So you underplay it.

Patrick Macnee

I was producing a series about Sir Winston Churchill, about which I was extremely proud, and earning a lot of money as a producer.

Patrick Macnee