I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.

Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.

My personal problem is that I take the business of film-making so seriously that I find it very difficult to relax.

When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set.

The path of my life is strewn with cow pats from the devil's own satanic herd!

I don't really have plans like that [move towards more dramatic acting].