Patrick Macnee Net Worth

Patrick Macnee's Quotes

• [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.
• [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?
• [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 would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.
• [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?

Interesting Facts about Patrick Macnee

1. Became a United States citizen in 1959. In addition to his acting career, Macnee worked as a television producer in Britain, the United States and Canada. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Canadian television.
2. He had two children from his first marriage to Barbara Douglas: Rupert Macnee and Jenny Macnee.
3. He was born, the elder of two brothers, to a wealthy and extraordinarily eccentric English-Scottish family. In 1925, aged 3, he and his family moved to College House in Lambourn, Berkshire. As his father (Daniel Macnee), a race horse trainer, had drank and gambled the family's money away, his mother (Dorothea Mary, nee Henry; died November 29, 1984) took young Patrick to live with her female lover, Evelyn, in a huge mansion in southern England, where he wore kilts until the age of 11. He was encouraged to call his mother's partner, who paid for his schooling through Eton, as "Uncle Evelyn".
4. During his run on The Avengers (1961), Macnee's only weapon was an umbrella sword; he was rarely if ever seen carrying or using a gun. Macnee has stated in interviews that he insisted on this, because he had seen enough carnage in combat during his military service in World War II.
5. He was forced to retire from acting due to problems with arthritis, but could still do voiceover work.
6. Was expelled from Eton for bookmaking.
7. He was the last surviving cast member of Hamlet (1948).
8. Has played the role of Algernon Moncrieff in three different television productions of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest".
9. Was considered for the roles of Dr. Hans Fallada, Sir Percy Heseltine and Dr. Armstrong in the science fiction horror film Lifeforce (1985).
10. Best known by the public for his starring role as Secret Agent John Steed on The Avengers (1961).
11. He was an avid nudist. Honor Blackman claimed that he once invited her to play tennis in the nude. She politely declined.
12. Acting mentor and friends with Diana Rigg.
13. Played a knighted character various times; Sir Percy in Les Girls (1957), Sir John Raleigh in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair (1983), Sir Denis Eton-Hogg in This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Sir Godfrey Tibbett in A View to a Kill (1985), Sir Cyril Landau in Shadey (1985), Sir Geoffrey Rimbatten in Lime Street (1985), Sir Wilfred in Waxwork (1988) and Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), Sir Colin in The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), and Sir Thomas Matthews in Family Law (1999).
14. He is one of three main avengers (the others being Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg) to appear in a "James Bond' film. He played "Sir Godfrey Tibbett" in A View to a Kill (1985).
15. For many years he smoked 80 cigarettes a day and drank a bottle of Scotch whisky every night. He was forced to give up drinking after being diagnosed with liver disease in the mid-1980s.
16. Macnee were cremated. His ashes were given to his daughter Jennifer.
17. He was the only actor to appear in every episode of The Avengers (1961).
18. His maternal grandmother was Frances Alice Hastings, who was the daughter of Vice-Admiral George Fowler Hastings and granddaughter of Hans Francis Hastings, 12th Earl of Huntingdon.
19. He passed away on June 25, 2015, at age 93, just 2 days after [Dick Van Patten], and within one year of three other television legends, also born in 1922, either 92 or 93: [Ellen Vogel], [Haskell Wexler] (who also shared the same birthday with Macnee) and [Lizabeth Scott].
20. He had 7 hobbies: golfing, spending time with his family, gardening, reading, swimming, playing tennis and horse riding.