We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

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

There are certain people that when they ask you to do a film, you just say, "Where and when?"

Once you've started to dig a hole, you can't get out of it.

My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel...

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 never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.