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.

I love seeing my characters big up there and I would have liked to have reached a different public in movies from my television public. There's still a part of me that wishes that my character range could be seen on the big screen. Rather, as Rod Steiger was, because he was a big influence on me - about becoming other people and not worrying about your own glory or self esteem but sacrificing yourself to become somebody else.

So, if I ever played Napoleon it would be with an Italian accent. He was an outsider, which also interests me.

I'm really not interested in showing me or playing me. My gift as an actor, given to me, is to be able to become other people.

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.

What we're doing is saying what happens with the establishment and how are we as ordinary human beings are used as pawns. What do we really know about what goes on! We think we are a democracy.... Are we? I'm not so sure.

The great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.