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.

I love playing real people. It's a huge challenge and responsibility which I take on board and which I relish. It also scares me to death. Give me a totally fictional character and I don't have the same sort of responsibility. If, though, I play Sigmund Freud or Robert Maxwell or whoever then there is a responsibility.

Deep inside, I am desperate to do comedy.

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.

There are clues in the script... he will say "I think drugs are immoral"'... but the guy who says that kills, tortures, pimps and has whores working for him. There is this strange morality going on, which is rather like the Mafia.

I am very traditional as a man. I am not modern and never have been. I think I was born 50 years of age and out of my time.

I'm 64 years old, and I've been acting now for 42 years. Only recently have I thought to myself, 'Hmmm, it may be interesting to start directing.'