Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

I've no regrets. You take responsibility for your actions.

Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

Working on a film, you don't get time to develop rivalries, but the theatre is like a little village, and the differences between me, Lionel and Georgia grew.

I'd wanted to be an actor from the age of five.

Fate destined me to play Fagin. It was the part of a lifetime, and I was the only actor to be in the stage production and in the film.

My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.

For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it.

Now I can see I was at fault for not being more considerate, but when we were doing the show I didn't think it was my job to be considerate to other people.

My portrayal of Fagin was all to do with my experience in comedy and revue.

Fate destined me to play 'Fagin.' It was the part of a lifetime.

I felt very insecure about whether I was up to recreating my stage 'Fagin' in front of a camera.

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

I love getting up in the morning with nothing else to do except write.

I never thought about settling down. I was obsessed with my career - I was blinkered. I finally met a woman who was worthy of me. Then we settled down and had many children.

I was offered Fagin-type roles, but I wanted to do new things. I could have worked in America, but there was a recession in the British film industry, and I wanted to work in England. I've no regrets.

I watch people constantly.

I went to the London School of Economics to study sociology and psychology on a serviceman's grant.

I would have liked to have been a professor of sociology.

I'd been collecting eccentric moves since I was a kid and didn't even know that the dance step I improvised in 'Be Back Soon' was called a 'pas de basque.'

I'll never forget seeing 'Guys and Dolls' over and over. I used to sit up in the coliseum watching this magnificent musical. Brilliant.

If we destroy the biosphere, then mankind will die. We all waste our time worrying about stupid wars and petty jealousy and greed, and all the time, we're sitting on a time bomb.

My proudest moment was the number 'Reviewing the Situation.' I suspect that, because I gave my all to the role and because I was working with such a fine team of people, it inhibited my future career.

Pressure makes people react in different ways. Some people plunge in, and others take the way out.

Summer of 1967 was one of the happiest times of my life.

The day after the Oscars, I flew back to London to film a television play for Anglia. It was a big mistake because you never really get acknowledged for wanting to work in England, as I did.

The world is always reinventing itself, and so should you. I used to say, 'I haven't started yet.' Sadly, most people don't develop their potential.

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.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.