I have been known for almost 30 years to sort of do whatever comes my way. It's always been touch-and-go after each job finishes. I just like to be working.

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

I think I understand the line between my job and the director's. I have no interest in directing. Not my movie, not your movie, nobody's movie.

You have this certain about of responsibility to play a fictitious character and you have a script that's guiding you and the other information of the custom department's choices, and the set department, "Where are you," and all those other pieces of information but you have to cull from your imagination the answer to all the unasked questions. And with a real person, there's someone to get that information from, perhaps.

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

The climate informs the character.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.