I want to express myself in a different way. I have a performing inclination.

This is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded or not. But yes, I found it difficult when we were shooting; it was a couple of weeks before I settled into not worrying - to finding a way of delivering those lines - so my worries of many months before I think had been justified. I found it a difficult way of being.

I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.

I think in many ways Johnny English is a more believable character.

Art is something that nobody laughs at and nobody makes any money out of is the attitude, which I would dispute.

The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

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