Biographie

Claims his biggest career mistake was turning down the lead in Love Story. The producers offered him a scale rate to star together with 10% of the gross. York felt the movie would not make any money so passed. This decision cost him well over 10 million in 1970's dollars.

At age three, he broke his nose when he jumped off the roof of a coal house while trying to fly.

Graduate of Oxford University.

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama.

Contrary to a common rumor, he didn't either play or provide a voice-over for one of the apes in La Folle Histoire de l'espace (1987). In 2016, at a National Press Club, he said that he has tried to get the credit off his online résumés, but has since given up on that.

Cinema, it has always seemed to me, is essentially a filmed thought.

[when told by Angelo Evangelatos that he wanted to be an actor, 2/5/05] If you want to do it, then forget about it. If you have to do it, then no one you talk to or seek advice from will make any difference.

Everyone wants to do "Hamlet" when you're young. And when you're old, you do "King Lear." And you hope to do "Hamlet" many times, because you never get it right in one go. It's so inexhaustibly fascinating. Shakespeare [William Shakespeare] is so brilliant, because you don't have to know what the author intended, because you don't quite know what the author did intend. He just wants you to use your imagination, he gives you some great words, and then you see where you end up.

[on director Michael Anderson] Michael is the kindest man. And it all comes from the top. He creates this benign atmosphere. The actors are not threatened, they're encouraged, and they're treated as human beings, and that's because he knows his stuff: Michael's been everything -- from the clapper boy, all the way up to editor and director. He knows what he wants.

I think all of the great directors are comfortable to make film a collaborative effort with actors.