Retirement
Wisdom announced his retirement from the entertainment industry on his 90th birthday (4 February 2005). He announced that he intended to spend more time with his family, playing golf and driving around the Isle of Man, where he was living.
In 2007, Wisdom returned to acting in a feature film directed by Kevin Powis, Expresso. The film, which Wisdom later announced (reported BBC/ITV News) was to be officially his last film role, is set during one day in a coffee shop and was funded by the UK Film Council and ScreenWM. Shot in January, it premièred at the Cannes Film Festival on 27 May 2007. It was later adopted by the UK charity Macmillan and released on DVD in aid of the charity. In the film Wisdom plays a vicar plagued by a fly in a café. Producer Nigel Martin Davey gave him only a visual role so he would not have to remember any lines, but on the day Wisdom was alert and had his performance changed to add more laughs.
Read more about this topic: Norman Wisdom
Famous quotes containing the word retirement:
“The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“Douglas. Now remains a sweet reversion—
We may boldly spend, upon the hope
Of what is to come in.
A comfort of retirement lives in this.
Hotspur. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)