I am young! Being creative and keeping your brain occupied is very sensible because if you don't you die, slowly.

I've always been hopeless at everything when I was a kid. That's why I became an actor - 'cause I couldn't do anything else.

Most of my last 30 years have been like that. Results and manifestations of things I'd dreamed of as a young kid and wanted as a child and as a young man. I realized it maybe 30 years ago. I thought, "This is unreal. This has happened as I expected it to, as I'd pictured it." My whole life has been like that and I'm fascinated by that power that we all have. That we create our lives as we go.

There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It's a bit scarier going on stage.

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.

The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don't dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.

On his Hannibal Lector mask: I've got it at home. I wear it to bed every night.