I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

I only like boutiques.

Any film I see at two o'clock in afternoon with my mother seems to cast a strange spell that means we both come out sobbing.

If you fall in love with a country and its people, that makes any country warm to you.

I know what it's like to have someone coming home who looks at you not in the way they used to in the old days, and I've seen my own face contorted with sadness and rage in the mirror.

I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries.

I don't know why people keep banging on about the '60s. I came from a conventional family and I didn't go off with different people - I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having.

Robert Louis Stevenson... I'm focusing on the late short stories that I was ignorant of. I always thought he was a boys' author, but he's not at all.

I'd rather live on my own than live with a face that looks at me with the wrong eyes.

He painted me when I was young because he was in love with me, but now that he has loved me he doesn't paint me anymore.

Keep smiling - it takes 10 years off!

When I was at school I used to scream in trains, in those concertina things between the carriages. I used to try to be so good that sometimes I couldn't bear it any more.

My mother was right: When you've got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.

People always like things that seem exotic.

If I were mayor, I'd invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I'd let the elderly in residential homes wander free.

Big Ben... hearing the chimes makes me feel at home.

David Attenborough... has that wonderful, breathy voice, and he's always so fascinated by what he's seeing. There's nothing about him that I can't find attractive.

I colour my hair mousy brown and I wear makeup only on stage. I use Laura Mercier - something called Biscuit, I think. I run one tiny sponge over my face and cover the red blotches. If I've got some rouge, I'll bung it on my mouth and cheeks.

I don't like getting older, but there's nothing I can do. Hitting 60 wasn't great, but I think I was lucky in not being that beautiful; it can be really cruel on people who have been stunning.

I feel most comfortable in an old pair of jeans, Converse, and a man's jersey. My best friend cuts my hair with kitchen scissors.

It's usually a jolly good trick to pick up a local tour guide. They can tell you all the anecdotes that make a place interesting. I'm one for rushing off to museums at the crack of dawn, eating fabulous things on terraces for lunch, and enjoying long dinners on balmy evenings.

My distinguishing feature is the gap between my teeth. I had to wear a brace because my teeth used to stick out like guns from a fortress.

My father was a painter, so I was encouraged to take a sketchbook everywhere. Cameras are perishable, but I still have tonnes of sketchbooks from all the trips I've ever been on. It gets you by when you don't know what to give people as a gift; drawings are good souvenirs.

Nothing has ever touched on what fun childhood was. Summer holidays were bliss. We made home movies, with real stories in them. My father had such charm and charisma, and made everything so funny.

When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.

When you start recognising that you're having fun, life can be delightful.

My look is a cocktail. I’m not as nicely turned out as the french, but I don’t care like the English.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.