Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.

I didn't do drugs. It wasn't my thing. But the drink was terrible. Today when I look back, it's like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much.

Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you've got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, "That's a really funny Robert De Niro." As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It's like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through.

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

I like a cheese and pickle. Nice cheese and pickle on a real old-fashioned bread. Ploughman's lunch.

I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.

'Nil By Mouth' was a bit autobiographical, but as I always pointed out at the time, that's not my dad.