I would like to be as fit as I've always been. I've been blessed with good health, I've been blessed with stamina. Particularly for those great classical roles, you need an Olympian stamina. I, fortunately, have that.

It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.

There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another.

I think that each character has fascinated and interested me enough to want to play him.

I thought it was getting better and better, because the production values were increasing each time we did it.

It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!