I do the best I can - I know my way around [Russian method acting pioneer] Stanislavski, but I can't take myself seriously like that. I respect people who do it, of course. I just think I'm lucky to still be working at 73. You reach a point in life where you just think, "Show up, do your job, make sure the cheque's on the way," and that's it. I'm not hungry to do anything more, really.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.

I'm not a health freak. I just work out every day.

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.

We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the bogeyman.

I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.

People ask, 'Should I call you Sir Hopkins?' But I say, 'No. Call me Tony,' because it's too much of a lift-up.