I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it.

But as my voice coach keeps saying, if we actually spoke the way they imagine the Elizabethan voice might have been, we wouldn't be able to understand it.

When people come to me and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face the next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.

There's four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.

Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do.

I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.

This is what happens when you are on the wrong side of 40. Young adults, who could be your children, are now working with you. I was playing their parents or mentor. I started to think: Oh, I am not part of that group any more.

I was never a leading man. I've always been in the outer concentric circles in the company, being a character actor, which is a good place to be. It gives you that diversity.

I die in almost every film I've been in.

They were saying, 'Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie.' I went, 'You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk.'

Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe.

Yes, anally retentive men are my forte!

I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.

My eye muscles hurt now when I read our MasterCard bill.

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego.

I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it.

People tend to think of Brisbane as a sleepy, sub-topical place. I don't know. It's like Baltimore or something. I don't know. You would hear the family dramas going on behind closed doors.

People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities.

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

It's their story, and I got to be the guy in the back while they were in the foreground.

Yeah, well, the F-bomb - it's become as ubiquitous as the word 'like.' People just throw the word 'like' around as punctuation. And I think in a lot of everyday speech, the F-bomb has become a kind of dash or a comma.

I always felt thrilled and amazed that I could put actor on my tax form.

I asked, 'What is this guy?' They said, he's part-fish, part-bird, maybe a bit of lizard, and you don't have to go through five hours of makeup to play him. That was good enough for me.

I didn't know the Green Lantern comics at all. I was a Superman reader.

I do love perusing the dictionary to find how many words I don't use - words that have specific, sharp, focused meaning. I also love the sound of certain words. I love the sound of the word pom-pom.

I guess I've been fortunate in having an ongoing film career while being based in Melbourne. I'm happy to commute. A day on a plane. Come on. It's easy.

I like roles that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, and there's special appeal in exploring these slightly forgotten plays that people might think of as subjects for academic term papers instead of live theater.

I wouldn't mind meeting some of the people I've attempted to portray from the olden, olden days. They probably would all have really terrible skin and horrible bad breath, and I'd have to give them an Altoid.

My kids started school, so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say, 'It's so far to Australia,' and I say, 'You get on the plane, you eat well, you sleep, you wake up - and you're there.'

Someone told me that there's a connection to Superman, that in an early edition of the Green Lantern comics, Tomar Re was the envoy to Krypton. That was fascinating to me.

Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.'

You had to be into sport and, sad to say, I'm a traitor to my country because I don't have a sporting bone in my body.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

There's nothing worse than talking about yourself to find out that you're not that interesting.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.