I think an actor is very like a sportsman. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work, and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

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 find it difficult to say, like "which child do you prefer the most", and its a sort of surface choice. I've never known how to quite answer that one adequately.

If you've got a great crew it's intense, but its quite short. 'The Elephant Man' was longer than most, for an independent film. That was a 14 week film. But it was because of the intrinsic difficulties. We had to invent a different way of filming, because the makeup was so long. A working day for me with a full makeup on was nineteen hours. So obviously you couldn't do that twice running.

There may be arrangements to have me retired but I don't know. Things happen that I enjoy doing, and as long as I enjoy doing them I'll go about doing them, I guess.

The image onscreen takes you forward, it's the driving force of the piece and it's also the information that you're given.