They were saying, 'Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie.' I went, 'You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk.'

Someone told me that there's a connection to Superman, that in an early edition of the Green Lantern comics, Tomar Re was the envoy to Krypton. That was fascinating to me.

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.

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.

This is what happens when you are on the wrong side of 40. Young adults, who could be your children, are now working with you. I was playing their parents or mentor. I started to think: Oh, I am not part of that group any more.

I suddenly became aware over the last couple of years that I'm in my sixties. I never thought about it. I thought I'd better start acting my age or find roles that are going to be interesting to me in the sexagenarian repertoire, because it's not what you do in your forties or fifties.

I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it.