When I opened up in "Gaslight," for instance, playing that narky maid, that all came about from my experience and my training up to that point, and so nothing was wasted.

Clint Eastwood is an extraordinary director because he knows the value of a buck. He knows where it will show on the screen.

The Manchurian Candidate was the most important movie I was in, let's face it.

I usually arrive at the first rehearsal with a vague memory of most of it. But the real work happens in rehearsal, oddly enough, because what happens is that you match the words to the movement, and once you know where you're moving, then the words that accompany that movement become not locked into your mind and your brain and your whole body.

As a kid, I just was a contract player at MGM Studios. They put me into goodness knows how many different roles.Some of them were wonderful and some of them were very just distasteful and awful because I was playing out of my age range and I was thoroughly uncomfortable, let's put it that way. So it took me many years to find my acting feet.

Actually the years when I was playing totally un - well, they were just roles that just went by the board, you wouldn't want to know. But anyway, I'm glad I had that chance to build my craft.

I played the Piccadilly Theater with "Gypsy" and also the Old Vic, and I've done other shows in London, but not for 40 years.