There are responsibilities which are parental responsibilities and those are the types of things we prepare the next generation for, but no one tells you how to answer the kids' questions in the backseat of the car when they want to know what the world is for or where they came from or why any of this is happening.

My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

If someone is going to talk about the process of making a film, it should be the director.

I am just surprised to be doing anything at my age actually. When you think of where I am now and where I've come from, I am very pleased and very grateful to be standing up and delivering Julian's great lines.

The last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.