I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

I think it helps to get a film made because people who put money in are nervous. They like to have something recognisable enough to make them secure that there's a pattern there - that someone else put their money into something like this and made it back.

'La Dolce Vita' made we want to go to Rome and, if not jump into the Trevi Fountain, at least watch someone else do it. Maybe that's why I married an Italian...!

Maybe it's shallow of me to have a wife that's so beautiful, but it makes things easier. To me she's the most beautiful woman in the world.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.

Sometimes to think about why some institutions are stable, it's interesting to go one generation back and look at the author of that stability.