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

As I say, there's something that scares the hell out of me but it really makes me work hard in losing myself. I'm not really interested in me as an actor or being a personality player, or a Hollywood star. What's given to me is to become different people and to find the truth of that. That is really what I do.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!