I thought I did play one villain, Hitler, [who is] like Lecter in some ways, but he's a mythical figure, anyway.

When I was a young guy, I knew everything. Now I know very little. I know less and less as the time goes on.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I love to have a laugh. I like to tease people.

I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page sunrise over the desert and masses of a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

I could stay making nice safe BBC movies for the rest of my life, so I decided to risk it. It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.