My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.

If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.

The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.

I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.

I often think that could we creep behind the actor's eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.

We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

'Richard III' is a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before.

A man's prime interest in life must be his work.

I can't think I've ever loved anybody quite as much... My mother was my life, really; she was my entire world.

I suppose, unconsciously, I used all my wives to further my journey up the ladder.

It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.

Nine books have been written about me, and there's not a word of truth in any of them.

Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time - every time I have a birthday.

Take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.

We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.

If he was lost for a moment he would dive straight back into its honey.

Dont waste your time striving for perfection instead strive for excellence doing your best.

Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.