I'm not experienced enough, or certain enough of my acting on the screen to say to a director, "You are wrong, I am right. I will only do it this way." I could never feel that, I wish I could be absolutely certain. But on the stage, it's different. I know where I am on the stage.

When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.

I think I'm a bit gruffer than I used to be, and I'm certainly older.

I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, 'Do you need help, brother?' And $1 fell into my hat!

I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887-1976) lived and painted.

I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.

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