From John Huston to Fred Zinnemann and Richard Fleischer and all those great American directors.

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.

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

We're all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say "Either you can or you can't."

I certainly don't see myself as Caligula.

I often say, with something like 'The Elephant Man,' had it been an American series for television, where you have to sign your life away for seven years...well, maybe I would never have made 'Sailcloth.'

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