If it's a low-brow bawdy comedy, it's got to stand the chance of succeeding as such. If it's an intellectual piece, a drama, and so forth. And of course, once you've determined the level of the piece, do it the best you know how. And then don't make concessions. To audiences, or to pursestrings, or whatever.

What I like about [Berthold] Brecht, it's very interesting. When Helene Weigel came over and somebody talked about Lotte Lenya and said "well, she wasn't alienating." And Weigel said "No, no, no. Why, Lotte Lenya was so true - who cares?" She said: "Berti only developed the theory of alienation in order to stop bad acting." I heard her say that. Now that's brilliant.

You collect as much information as you can and then you put it into the mulberry of your mind and hope that you come up with a decent wine. Sometimes you do; sometimes you don't.

I was keen on sports-that's how my nose got this way. It's not actually broken; the nose was just pushed up a little bit and moved over. It's an aquiline nose, quite Irish.

I find it difficult to say, like "which child do you prefer the most", and its a sort of surface choice. I've never known how to quite answer that one adequately.

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.

I don't like no confusion.