There are loads of black actors.You can't say: I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good but he's black, [so] I'll vote for him. You've got to give a good performance.

I feel that I helped the working class by just saying there are no barriers, which I consider to be true.

I just work in order to improve myself as an actor which is what I've always done.

I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality.

Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It's very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser