If one is going to offer children stories that underneath the story must be something that will inform, stimulate and guide, I love to be on board. I think anything that resonates with history, as does The Jungle Book and Watership Down, reflects patterns of behavior, power struggles, deprivation, migration, survival, joy, love, betrayal, and all of these things. It's tragic that children are encouraged to ignore history. We ignore history and any literature that is historically based in history. Even though both of those films involved animals, of course they reflect human behavior.

You need particular note or rhythm in the symphony to be that minor key, or that sharp key or major chord. In musical terms, I try to hit the right note. But not alter the score of the music, just emphasize the note correctly.

I think that most actors, and they're a very strange lot actors, very strange people, but I think that they attempt to keep in touch with the child.

The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.

I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.