When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it's hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.

If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

You never know people, do you? You can work with 'em for twenty years; you don't know 'em at all.

I have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.