I'm cheaper than Anthony Hopkins. The other actors they asked to play Gandalf wouldn't go to New Zealand on that money for that length of time. I thought it would be a bit of an adventure. Tony Hopkins didn't think it would be an adventure. Tony is part of Hollywood. I'm an eccentric English actor, and there's a lot of us around.

The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look, because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.

Why live outside the US? Do you want health care or safe food products or democracy or something? They're all overrated. Stay for the excellent cable TV.

You would be surprised how many directors don't know what they want. They might not know what they want until they see it, they might know what they want but no idea how to get it out of the actor, then you've both got a problem.

That's the imagination that happens in the theater. That imagination is translated in film by the film magicians and all the technology.

All other areas of my life, I'm hopeless. I can't even be certain how to boil an egg.

There's no sex in Middle Earth.