In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. Alas, poor Yorick, that's about death. And in Romeo and Juliet everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

You do a job like mine because you love the job, not because it's going to make you famous.

At acting school people didn't speak like me. It was all received pronunciation - 'ow now brown cow.'

I'm not the sort of bloke who spends a long time in the bathroom. I've never used a face cream in my life and I don't like it when I go on TV and they offer me make-up. I tell 'em, 'No thanks.'

Playing with guns you revert to a little boy sometimes. But they're not great things to play with, so it's just making them look real. When it comes to shooting guns or using any prop, you've got to make it look like you know what you're doing with them. It's called acting.

I've never met a politician I haven't wanted to walk away from, and I've yet to hear a politician speak and actually believe the words coming out of his mouth.