Biografia

At age 92, he and wife Mary, age 89, renewed their marriage vows at St. Mary's Church, next to their home, Hills House, in Denham, England. When they had wed 60 years earlier, he was denied a church service because he was serving in the Army during World War II.

He was a close friend of the English actor/director Richard Attenborough, who read the eulogy at his funeral.

He and his first wife Aileen Raymond both died in April 2005, 73 years after they were married.

His wife of 64 years, Mary Hayley Bell, suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years. Due to the advanced stage of her illness, she was unable to attend his funeral on April 27, 2005.

Father of actresses Juliet Mills, Hayley Mills and writer/producer Jonathan Mills.

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.

[referring to his Oscar-winning role as a brain-damaged mute in A Filha de Ryan (1970)] 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.

A Filha de Ryan (1970) 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' father.

[in a personal tribute to Noël Coward] I don't know any actor alive today who could get laughs with, apparently, so little effort. You never compromised or went out after our sympathy for one moment.

[on Trevor Howard] He became one of the finest actors we ever had. One of the greatest, and a lovely man with it.