I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

I don't have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don't know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don't know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don't think you need all that stuff.

The trick is not to get too fanatical about getting the accent too accurate because then that becomes a mask. What I try to do is just painting and sketching some of the sounds without obliterating my own voice.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can't even comprehend it. It's such an illusion, it's such a strange thing.

I like to work. I don't like to disrupt my equilibrium. I don't like to change my head. I'd rather be a third-rate actor. It's a job, and I'm dedicated in my way. I enjoy it. I'm serious about it. But if it doesn't come off, I'm not going to die.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.