He was living in an age much more dangerous, more painful, much more on the edge than our own particular age.

Actors, I don't think, ever really grow up. I'm hoping that that rejuvenating process applies to me, too. It has so far. I've been very lucky.

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.

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

I had to think long and hard about what it would imply, what it would mean. Would it mean any alterations of one's lifestyle? Or, more than that, the way that people regarded you? The way they reacted to you if you had a Sir in front of your name?

We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable.

I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.