I find his films about as funny as getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it.

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.

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 have always worried about things more than I should.

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.

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 job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.