I thought ['Sailcloth'] was a terrific script. Elfar Adalsteins, the director, is bound to be a director we'll hear from, and the whole thing was really enjoyable.

[Alfred] Hitchcock was very interested in the image on the screen.As is any good cinema director. That is the language they speak. It is not literature, it is images on screen.

If you've got a great crew it's intense, but its quite short. 'The Elephant Man' was longer than most, for an independent film. That was a 14 week film. But it was because of the intrinsic difficulties. We had to invent a different way of filming, because the makeup was so long. A working day for me with a full makeup on was nineteen hours. So obviously you couldn't do that twice running.

You can see areas where maybe you got a bit lazy, perhaps, or you see when you were really on form. I think an actor is very like a sportsman in that respect. You have periods where you're in terrific form.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

We're all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say "Either you can or you can't."

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.