I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.

The audience should feel like voyeurs. Their response is absolutely crucial.

I've never been able to plan my life. I just lurch from indecision to indecision.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.

All I want to see from an actor is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.

I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.

You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.

I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience.

What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.

When I get off the plane in England I always feel about two inches shorter.

If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

Who I am gets in the way of people looking innocently at the parts I play.

I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.

Somebody with Debbie Reynolds' features doesn't get cast as the Wicked Witch.

I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.

On film you put all your energies into a single glance.

My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.

If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.

I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.

If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.

Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.

I was 7, and I remember being given a part in a play and thinking, This is exciting.

There's a voice inside you that tells you what you should do.

I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.

It would be wonderful to think that the future is unknown and sort of surprising.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, 'I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.' Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.

Actors are actually very supportive of each other.

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

And it's a human need to be told stories. The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.

Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.

England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.

Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.

Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.

From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

I am the character you are not supposed to like.

I approach every part I'm asked to do and decide to do from exactly the same angle: who is this person, what does he want, how does he attempt to get it, and what happens to him when he doesn't get it, or if he does?

I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am.

I do feel more myself in America. I can regress there, and they have roller-coaster parks.

I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.

I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.