I felt, you know, body and soul, as it were. But, of course, I mean, I - at that age, I didn't think in terms of being professional. I didn't know anything about it. That happened later.

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.

[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.

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.

I stopped asking a long time ago, "why would you want me to play that?" I'm an actor. That's what I do.

I think you can fan the flames, but I think in the same way that a mathematician is a mathematician - He's not taught to be a mathematician. He either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well.

The only concession you can make is to what you believe is right.