“People think I have the benefit of a public school education. I have this suave and debonair label, but really, I'm as common as muck.”
“Power is always a corrupting influence.”
“We have to take risks in British television. It has to stop playing to the lowest common denominator and patronising people.”
“Your senses are reeling all the time. Finally you find something to write and the very next day you go out and see something else which totally contradicts what you've written and every conclusion you've come to.”
“I don't like watching television too much; it tires me out for some reason. But I saw a fair bit of 'Game of Thrones' because it was so good. I mostly watched episodes that I wasn't in.”
“I got a lot of energy from directing the film 'Ladies In Lavender.' You wonder if you have the stamina because as an actor you can lounge around the trailer during the scenes you're not in, but as a director, you're there from first thing in the morning to last thing at night every day of the week. I found it incredibly energising.”
“I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.'”
“I like to be busy. I once shared an agent with the late Sir John Gielgud, who, at 96, was apparently still ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Gielgud here, any work?' Good on him. We've got to keep working. If we retire, there'll be nobody to play the old wrinklies, and that would be a dreadful shame.”
“In my home, I listen to music; I play music: I play guitar and I play ukelele. And I swim and I ride a bike and I do all the things that everybody else does.”
“My face lends itself to austere characters, and unless they're two-dimensional, I will do them. Any actor will tell you that an interesting villain is much more interesting to play.”