I'm never bored, never ever bored. If I've got a day off I'll sit in a cafe and watch and observe. I'm a great observer.

Napoleon was one of the most complex personalities in history.He was ruthless, small in stature, a bully, vulnerable, unfaithful and I think he was the first person to shoot prisoners of war so that he had food for his own army. He was absolutely single-minded but he also obviously had charm. How else could a man like him have come back as he did and have the nation rise to a man!

In The Godfather, for instance, they say they won't deal drugs because they have a code of behaviour. He is the last remnants of that. So playing someone like that, who is also in pain with his kidney stone, means you're beginning to find a dimension of the guy who is king and all show and the private guy who is in pain.

A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.

When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film.

I don't really want people to see me. I'm not into stardom.

When I was 18 and not sure whether I wanted to be an actor, I realised that a playwright has no voice without an actor. That's my reason for acting: to get that character as right as possible for my writer. And I have never changed my philosophy.