I'd worked in Clockwork Orange with Stanley Kubrick and since Stanley was such a prestigious director this opened all sorts of doors for me - one of them being Star Wars.

I think it's good to, especially when you start to get to achieve certain levels of success and start doing a lot of interviews and having a lot of reviews, it would be quite easy to get pretty full of yourself. I think it's an important thing to try and keep yourself in check and just be aware that popularity doesn't necessarily run in parallel to quality.

George Lucas was casting about and had heard favourable things about my work in Clockwork Orange and asked me to come in, which of course I did even though no one knew what the film was about!

I do remember smiling quite a bit inside it though since I knew it wouldn't be seen on film - so of course while the poor planet is being blown up I'm smiling and laughing like mad!

I'm also involved in the rights of the disabled and do some fundraising for that and I thought it would have been a big boost for the campaign but it couldn't be worked out.

I can't get my head around the fact that the technology of the first two movies, which are forty years prior to Star Wars, is so much better than any technology they had in Star Wars!

So I went to George and told him I had the opportunity to become the figurehead of a government safety campaign, and he agreed to give me the week off and reschedule shooting!