If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict, we flirt with death. We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we’re lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us.

It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.

I'm always cast in these strange men... that's not me, really.

I do my job, and I do what I’m paid to do and I’m always prepared. I prepare by learning the text so well that when I show up, I’m relaxed and the performance sort of happens. Now whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know... Whatever I say is going to sound very egocentric and self centered anyway so I’d better shut up.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he's terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he's a terrific actor.