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.

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.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

'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.

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

Lotte Lenya was all emotion. She wasn't anything but emotion. She was not an intellectual.