To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

I enjoy making films, but my heart is in the stage. Every night you have to be on. There's no second take.

Now I have begun to get interested in films and I just hope that people start becoming interested in me to do more films.

I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.

I certainly had no intention of playing a man.

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.