My fun as an actor and my task as an actor is to transform myself to become other people. I enjoy becoming characters but I don't enjoy becoming caricatures. The research I do is only necessary in so far as we move into other dimensions.

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

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

I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation.

Although I'm a very emotional man, I just can't have blind faith, I have to find out for myself.

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.

I became fascinated by the fact that people write to give away rather than write to be read. It's the difference between playwrights and novelists.