Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego.

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe.

When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas.

I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.

Freedom is the kind of essence of being a pirate: You're away from land-locked Europe. You're not part of the society. You're part of the brotherhood of the sea, Your ship is your sense of identity. So when you approach the wheel, that's what you own.

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.