Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

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.

I always like to arrive at the airport early to enjoy breakfast and lounge about so that when I get on the plane all my travel fever has disappeared.

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don't we?

I think Americans are wonderful film actors - the best in the world - but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.