I'm very, very family oriented. I'm a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now.

If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, 'How much is that?'

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

My own mentality is that I've retired. They send me these scripts and if I absolutely have to do it, then I go to work.

To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.

In real life, I'm afraid of heights - and people who get moral convictions... Adolf Hitler in London.