Billy Connolly reaches high in Dustin Hoffman's 'Quartet'

Starring opposite Maggie Smith in 'Quartet' pushed comedian Billy Connolly to do his best in a film about opera singers in a retirement home.

Billy Connolly may have been named the U.K.'s "most influential stand-up comedian of all time" this year, but at his core he's the same banjo-playing welder who infused his Humblebums gigs with joke-telling. So when he was asked to play a role recently abandoned by Albert Finney and opposite Maggie Smith in Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut "Quartet," it was only natural the 69-year-old Scot would feel some pangs of trepidation.

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