1. “I do think I’m a character actor.”
2. “Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they’re doing.”
3. “Sometimes to think about why some institutions are stable, it’s interesting to go one generation back and look at the author of that stability.”
4. “Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.”
5. “However good a communicator a director is, unless they’ve been actors, it’s just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who’s been an actor.”
6. “The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothe for a child I didn’t know well.”
7. “I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five knew me and were indifferent.”
8. “Looking in the mirror, staring back at me isn’t so much a face as the expression of a predicament.”
9. “You have to be ill if you want to get better.”
10. “No matter how much technique you draw on or how much training you have, acting is a mystery.”
11. “My singing voice i somewhere between a drunken apology an a plumbing problem.”
12. “Nothing brings you closer together than blind terror.”
13. “I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better – or a lot worse.”
14. “Comedy – particularly the frothy and frivolous – is notoriously neglected by festivals and awards. But it’s bloody hard to get right.”
15. “Hollywood hasn’t aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.”
