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.

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.

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!

It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do.

Every person who is offered a knighthood has the opportunity to say yes or no. You get a letter from the Prime Minister saying you've been recommended for a knighthood and there are two little boxes, one says yes, one says no.

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.

They were totally supportive, always saw everything I did. One of the thrills of my life was when they went to the theater to see something that I wasn't in. It opened doors for them that otherwise would have been totally closed.