Marketing is what gets you noticed, and that side of it something - this side of it, if you like, doing interviews - is the side of it that I least enjoy, and yet is 50% of the project.

I like to relish words and sentences, and phraseology, and there's not much facility for that [playing Maigret].

But I always feel that whatever I do, I could do better. I suppose it is perfectionism.

The one thing I would never wish it to be thought is that you play serious roles in order to achieve some sort of respectability which you can't if you're playing comedic roles.

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

Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That's a platform we use, or a priest. You know, anywhere you lecture and pontificate to people.

I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It's not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.