I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's Morris Minor. I drove it around my father's farm. But my favorite car is still a McLaren F1, which I have had for 10 years.

No, no, I was only funny on stage, really. I think I was funny as a person toward my classmates when I was very young. You know, when I was a child, up to about the age of 12.

I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play.

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.

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.

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.

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.