I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

He also continued to appear on the stage notably in the plays of Simon Gray such as Butley and Otherwise Engaged. )
Around this time he appeared as Col. Throughout the 1960s he starred in several major films including Whistle Down the Wind (1961) A Kind of Loving (1962) Zorba the Greek (1964) Philippe de Broca's King of Hearts (1966) Georgy Girl (1966) Far From the Madding Crowd (1967) and in the Bernard Malamud film The Fixer (1968) which gave him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Bates went on to star in The Go-Between An Unmarried Woman Nijinsky and The Rose with Bette Midler as well as playing varied roles in television drama including The Mayor of Casterbridge Harold Pinter's The Collection A Voyage Round My Father An Englishman Abroad (as Guy Burgess) and Pack of Lies. Sir Alain Arthur Bates CBE (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) was an English actor who came to prominence in the 1960s a time of high creativity in British cinema when he appeared in films ranging from the popular children's story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving.