I've never done a [Berthold] Brecht. In the 1960s when the Berliner Ensemble came over [to England] with Helene Weigel [Brecht's second wife], I saw all the Berlin actors. It was an amazing time, very exciting early 1960s.

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

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

People say you never retire in this [film] business and I say, well, not until they retire you.

It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone. You don't feel that you're being tested, as it were.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

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