Most films are written and made with a hero around 35, or even 25.

A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.

When you get to a certain age, the work begins to thin out.

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.

A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?

I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.

You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.

If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.

We had five goats, two dogs, a cat and racks of commentaries on Shakespeare.

Most films are written and made with a hero around 35, or even 25.

It's a question of keeping one's eyes and ears open and watching how other people play the game. They're watching me too, to see what my attitude is like.

I'm playing one of the principal roles, which gives you more clout and more confidence.

A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.

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 mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams,' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

I've got a range as an actor! There was a time I played dramatic leading men.

I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause, then it's wonderful.

If I was to put a little flag in everywhere I've been in the world, there'd be a lot of little flags.

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.

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.

Politics is the most corrupt profession on Earth, no matter where you are.

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.

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings.

You should encourage a child to show off. You can say to a child, 'Stop being rude,' 'Stop shouting,' 'Stop jumping around on the furniture.' But 'Stop showing off'? That's awful.

Nothing seemed as scary as waking up at 40 and realizing that I had not lived a very courageous life.

I've been working pretty solidly for a long time: Not that anyone would notice, you know what I mean? It's been my goal to work as much as possible, and be as unknown as possible.

Dancing is wonderful training for girls its the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.

I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

I was very lucky growing up, and I got all my dad's and aunts' toys from the 1950s and 1960s and loved those old pedal cars.

The last thing you want to do when you are about to film a scene is think, 'Oh my God, so many people are going to watch this.'

Don't take tomorrow to bed with you.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

I have no message or answers to social questions.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it's not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That's how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be a musician.

Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.

We should never forget the inevitable, as we will lose everything eventually. So, why fret over any kind of security? The idea is to just fly and experience it all while it lasts.

I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling.Stop

I became number one just after the World Championships in India. I was very young then, and I remember it was just a great feeling, my first World Championship.

The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.

I miss New York terribly. There is no place like the city. I miss people-watching. I miss the nightlife. I miss the food. There are so many options in New York City.

Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way.

These works brought all these people here. Something should be done to get them at work again.

Find a priest who understands English and doesn't look like Rasputin.

I loved Martin Luther King more than a brother.