Ian McShane quotes:

My dad was a football player - a soccer player - for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.

The shrimp was lousy and the champagne tasted like water [at the Golden Globes

You don't particularly want to stay close to your ex-wife. Or why would she be your ex-wife?

Bosses will tell you they are looking for something different but they're not, actually.

I come from the liberal side of thinking: Better one guilty man should walk free than one innocent man found guilty.

I had a bit of a male menopause. It started at the age of 18 and continued until I was 45.

Theater is a dance of a different kind, a dance of rawness and characters stripped down.

The bad boy: always more fun.

What you do is, you just do the gig, enjoy, get on with it, and treat the rest as horse doodle.

I'm a child of the Sixties.

I mean, I'm an actor. I do what comes along.

When you're in your early 20s, you go ahead and do everything. And it's very hard to judge yourself.

Every actor has to love and loathe the character he plays.

As long as the cheques carry on coming in, and I'm enjoying my work, I shall continue acting.

I don't remember my first two marriages... the details are very sketchy.