Paris in the mid-'50s was a very interesting place. It was only ten years after the Third Reich had left, and the city was awash with guns, and crime, and racketeering, and all sorts of hangovers from a very difficult time in French history. So it's an interesting time to be a policeman.

What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

The first couple of weeks of filming were quite tricky for me to find my feet with the character [Maigret], which wasn't helped by the story that we were telling.

To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

It was the challenge of that that I found daunting, but also engaging and interesting [to play Maigret].

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