I'm away so much I've had to learn to cook, and I find it relaxing after filming. I make stews and liver and bacon, and an Italian mate taught me how to make a mean puttanesca sauce.

Sometimes you also work with people who don't explain or express to you what they're actually looking for from the shot but you haven't got that problem with this because whatever you're going to do, whether it's good or bad, will get picked up. So, in that way I guess it's pure cinema.

I know I've got to pay some tax, but I hate the fact that they collect millions of pounds a day from the congestion charge and I don't see anything or anyone benefitting from it. Where are the new hospitals?

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.

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.'

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.

Elaine and I got married in summer 1979, we went on our honeymoon and came back for the premiere of Scum. All of sudden my face was on billboards in Leicester Square and people were crowding outside the cinema, going mad about the film. It was a complete shock.