I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

[Bong Joon-ho'] is quite different but technically, he is as clever as [Alfred] Hitchcock. That's saying something. In humanitarian terms, I think he is much cleverer. He is one of the best directors I've worked with. I absolutely adore working with him.

It's quite interesting, looking back at the first one [film about Harry Potter], nobody knew whether or not it was going to be successful as a film. The books were of course already very successful, but that's happened before, where the books were successful and the films weren't at all. But it turned out that they were.

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio...

Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people's work would suggest that I think I'm talented.

If you do an interview in 1960, something it's bound to change by the year 2000. And if it doesn't, then there's something drastically wrong.

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.