In the end, the game is the same. Football is still football. Now, they may play with different formations, they may have a different idea of training, but the game doesn't alter. I don't mind how any performer - indeed, why should I? How arrogant of me if I did? - manages to get to what they have to get to. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as it isn't going to destroy other people on the way.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really. And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it's being able - I can't tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.

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

Very broadly speaking, you can put directors into two areas: One for whom you work, and the other with whom you work. And I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons.

I left drama school and went straight into a 10-week film for which I was paid £75 I might say, which for 1962 was one heck of a lot of money.

I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script. There are certain people that are auteurs, and you accept them regardless of whether you see a script or not. But Spielberg is not an auteur.

'The Elephant Man' was hugely enjoyable to do. I thought the one stage, when Chris Tucker did the first makeup and it took 12 hours, I thought they'd actually found a way for me not to enjoy filming.