You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.

If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.

I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.

Your senses are reeling all the time. Finally you find something to write and the very next day you go out and see something else which totally contradicts what you've written and every conclusion you've come to.

Power is always a corrupting influence. In this mythical time - let's call it medieval, feudal - people in power are dictatorial and don't want their positions of power to be threatened.

Because [writers] Dan Weiss and David Benioff have done such a great job in adapting them, that's what we work with. It serves no purpose to anybody for actors to come onto a set with a well-thumbed copy of the source material and start querying why this or that line has been left out of the script. It's probably been left out for a good reason.

I spent a lot of time [between takes] apologising to Peter Dinklage [Dance's on-screen son, Tyrion Lannister] because I treat him appallingly.