Patrick Macnee

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Birthday:

6 February 1922, Paddington, London, England, UK

Birth Name:

Daniel Patrick Macnee

Height:

185 cm

British actor Patrick Macnee was born on February 6, 1922 in London, England into a wealthy and eccentric family. His father, Daniel Macnee, was a race horse trainer, who drank and gambled away the family fortune, leaving young Patrick to be raised by his gay mother, Dorothea Mary, and her lover. Shortly after graduating from Eton (from which he was almost expelled for running a gambling ring), Macnee first appeared on stage and made his film debut as an extra in Pygmalion (1938). His career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the Royal Navy. After military service, Macnee attended the Webber Douglas School of Dramatic Art in London on scholarship. He also resumed his stage and film career, with bit parts such as Young Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1951). Disappointed with his limited roles, Macnee left England for Canada and the United States.In 1954, he went to Broadway with an Old Vic troupe and later moved on to Hollywood, where he made occasional television and film appearances until returning to England in 1959. Once back home, he took advantage of his producing experience in Canada to become coproducer of the British television series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (1960). Shortly thereafter, Macnee landed the role that brought him worldwide fame and popularity in the part of John Steed, in the classic British television series The Avengers (1961). His close identification with this character limited his career choices after the cancellation of the series in 1969, prompting him to reprise the role in The New Avengers (1976), which, though popular, failed to recapture the magic of the original series. During the 1980s and 1990s, Macnee became a familiar face on American television in such series as Gavilan (1982), Empire (1984), Thunder in Paradise (1994) and Night Man (1997). In the past decade, Macnee has also made several audio recordings of book fiction. Show less «

[on Linda Thorson] I would have liked her to learn how to act. It was going from a very great height. If you listen to her, you can never he...Show more »

[on Linda Thorson] I would have liked her to learn how to act. It was going from a very great height. If you listen to her, you can never hear the end of a sentence. You'd never catch Diana Rigg, not being able to hear what she said. Show less «

[on the film version of Sleuth (1972)] It's bad because you really can't make a film with only two people in it. Let me put it another way: ...Show more »

[on the film version of Sleuth (1972)] It's bad because you really can't make a film with only two people in it. Let me put it another way: a suspense film with only two people in it. Particularly when they didn't take the trouble to make Michael Caine look unrecognizable. Immediately after they put his first close-up on, you knew it was Michael Caine. Doesn't that ruin the whole point? Show less «

[on Bond novels] The books are written completely on the basis of Ian Fleming, who was a sadomasochist.

[on Citizen Kane (1941)] It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one wo...Show more »

[on Citizen Kane (1941)] 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. Show less «

[on Laurence Olivier's performance in Sleuth (1972)] The thing about Olivier, he was too big, you see? He was trying to be a little like tha...Show more »

[on Laurence Olivier's performance in Sleuth (1972)] The thing about Olivier, he was too big, you see? He was trying to be a little like that man should be, which is a little sort of upper class, probably a repressed homosexual. I think that the wife obviously led him a pretty dance. Olivier missed all of these points. I was rather good at that because I was able to get all of the subtlety out of the fact that he must have had a miserable life with the wife because he was a closet queen, you know? Show less «

[on Patrick McGoohan] Pat is one of the best actors there's ever been. Trouble was, he drank. So it limited his career.

[on the danger of being typecast] I know the part of Steed was created for me, and it was developed from my own background and personality, ...Show more »

[on the danger of being typecast] I know the part of Steed was created for me, and it was developed from my own background and personality, but I'm still a long way from being typecast. I suppose, though, that you could describe me as an unashamed romantic. I really think I'd have enjoyed the life of a Regency buck. Show less «

I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round. I'm looking at an armchair, which from where I'm sitting n...Show more »

I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round. I'm looking at an armchair, which from where I'm sitting now is about 2 foot (away). I saw in this circular theater in Chichester in a play by Somerset Maugham, Ingrid Bergman with a dress on which was her naked back down to just before her buttocks, you know? And I could reach out and touch them if I wanted to. That's probably the most erotic thing I've ever seen in my life - Ingrid Bergman walking around in a theater-in-the-round in a backless dress, not long before she died. Show less «

[on Alec Guinness] The whole thing about Guinness was, of course, was that he was a closet - but not all that closet - homosexual. There's s...Show more »

[on Alec Guinness] The whole thing about Guinness was, of course, was that he was a closet - but not all that closet - homosexual. There's so much of all that coming out, as though it makes a difference to their talent - which it basically doesn't. But Guinness had a problem, because most people thought he was heterosexual - because he was married and had a son - but basically he was homosexual. So many people have had that, what they call "problem". Show less «

In the year 1960, which I think was when the Bond films started, somebody said, when I was in Canada, when I was preparing to do The Avenger...Show more »

In the year 1960, which I think was when the Bond films started, somebody said, when I was in Canada, when I was preparing to do The Avengers (1961), they said, "Will you read the Bond stories by Ian Fleming to get an idea of your character?". And I read it and said, "I would like to play, and in fact, I will not be in the show at all unless I can play, the part completely opposite to James Bond." I find James Bond repulsive, sadistic and, of course, we now read the life of Ian Fleming and realize that he liked smacking women's bottoms more than anything else. Just read it. Show less «

[on the screenwriters of The Avengers (1961)] There was no good writing, there was no clever dialogue. Di [Diana] Rigg and I used to write a...Show more »

[on the screenwriters of The Avengers (1961)] There was no good writing, there was no clever dialogue. Di [Diana] Rigg and I used to write all our scenes because it was so badly written. They were written as rather ordinary thrillers, to be honest. The writers chose very clever topics, like having a robot man way before people thought of robots, etc. But what we really did, and I say 'we' advisedly, was to see what would happen if we took these perfectly straight stories and then made them ever so slightly ludicrous - because we thought that life was ludicrous anyway, which it is! To stay alive and all, you have to be slightly mad - but you also had to be basically cool. We used that, we tilted it a bit, we made it funny and the show worked. Show less «

[on the possibility of an Avengers movie, 1984 interview] Brian Clemens produced such a bad script for it two years ago that CBS turned it d...Show more »

[on the possibility of an Avengers movie, 1984 interview] Brian Clemens produced such a bad script for it two years ago that CBS turned it down. I think other people are keen to do so. But I wouldn't be keen to do it, no. That was a thing of its time, it was a thing of the '60s and we were ahead of our time. It was lovely then, but now I say let's do something in the '80s that is ahead of its time. If I'm going to do a series, I want it to be new. Show less «