You're suspended sixty feet up in the air, you've been up there for three hours, and all the shot requires is that you have to sort of react to getting punched in the head.

I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life.

The worst thing that an actor can do is go into any project with a lack of respect for the material. You can have an opinion about it, but you have to respect yourself in doing it.

I've been acting for 25 years, living out of suitcases on theater tours or film locations.

The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.

I enjoy playing villains - I'm very proud that I belong to a very honorable tradition of British actors who come to Hollywood to play the bad guys. At some point in American film, I think there was the idea that the British accent had a tone to it that's a little bit naughty.

I think, because of my background, which is slightly more exotic than the average British actor, I think, I sort of occupied this little niche quite early on of playing the foreign guy. It started way back at drama school, I played an Eastern European heavy, I played the Russian mobster. And I have done all those different ethnic roles, and I think it's partly because of my look, I think I've got an adaptable sort of nondescript ethnicity, which you can't quite pin down, but it's enough to kind of get a flavor of something.