I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.

When it comes to politics, I believe you have to cut the cake so that everybody gets a piece, but at the same time, you have to keep in mind that somebody has to make the cake.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I'm looking for me to disappear, and the acting to disappear, and all you see is a real person.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.