You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

What could be better than to hold your hand out to people less fortunate than you are?

I don't go for the so-called "intimate" stuff. Column items that report: "Minerva Ferncroft sleeps in pink dusting powder between puce-colored sheets in a heart-shaped bed." It leaves me cold.

You discover a lot of things on your feet and if you don't have any rehearsal, then anything that happens on the screen is by accident.

For some players, luck itself is an art

While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it.