Acting is an imaginative exercise. It would be odd if you didn't try to identify with the roles you play, but I think I can differentiate between where my imagination is leading me and where I actually am.

'The Naked Civil Servant' was as important for me as 'Easy Rider' was for Jack Nicholson. No question.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

If I'm in theatre, cinema doesn't even cross my mind. Similarly when I'm making a film, theatre doesn't cross my mind.

The most difficult thing about painting is the self-discipline. When I finish a job, I give myself a few days, but then I have to discipline myself quite fiercely if I want to do some painting that's worthwhile. Otherwise, you're just doodling. It's much easier when you're just told what you have to do.

I've never guided my life. I've just been whipped along by the waves I'm sitting in. I don't make plans at all. Plans are what make God laugh. You can make plans, you can make so many plans, but they never go right, do they?

I've lived publicly and never hidden behind closed doors. Therefore, if I have gone over the top sometimes, it has been visible.

How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

I first got involved with Mel Brooks through 'The Elephant Man.' Everybody knows now, but they didn't know at the time that he was the producer.

The things that I've enjoyed most are not really science fiction. They are not much fun to make because there are so many toys involved. They are fun for directors who like toys, like Ridley Scott, but they are not a lot of fun to make. A lot of hanging around, changing this and that.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

I've done some stinkers in the cinema. You can't regret it; there are always reasons for doing something, even if it's just the location.

You can see areas where maybe you got a bit lazy, perhaps, or you see when you were really on form. I think an actor is very like a sportsman in that respect. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

Human beings are very good at adapting to what happens.

There's an awful lot of hanging around when you're doing science fiction. Going down and waiting for them to set up, being told to go back to your dressing room while they change the track and the lighting and so on.

I've always felt, and I think I'm qualified to say so because I've won a few awards, that it's a terrible shame to put something in competition with something else to be able to sell something.

There are situations where you are left robbed of all quality of life, and I believe it is entirely up to you how you want to deal with that. You can follow the dictates of religion if that is what you believe in, or you can take a personal decision.

I think people should be protected from being made to feel that they want to know what somebody famous had for breakfast.

I'd love to claim that what I have done in my life is of my doing, but it's not of my doing at all. I've blown around in the wind like a mad thing, influenced by this and that - like a piece of paper: like the boy in that scene in 'American Beauty' watching a piece of paper blowing hither and thither.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

I've been incredibly lucky with the directors I've worked with.

I like entertaining. I adore it. I feel I'm in the right place. Without question.

Very, very broadly speaking, you can put directors into two areas: One for whom you work, and the other with whom you work. And I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons. It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone.

Really, I'm only alive out of curiosity. I'm very curious about where we're all marching.

I'm somewhat old-fashioned, and I still talk about playing a part. I don't talk about my work - 'I've seen some of your work' - there's not much work in it, is there?

Where humanity is going to find itself in, say, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years would be very difficult to predict, I think. There are moments, of course, when you think that it's going from bad to worse, but there are other moments when you think that human efforts are really flowering into something really fantastic.

I didn't want to teach. I wanted to act. It was quite a long and difficult road to get there but very thrilling when I did.

Essentially, I am an actor for hire. I am not a rarified creature. I do all these different things, and they all interest me.

I've done all sorts of children's things before, but none as big as 'Harry Potter.'

I love the uilleann pipes and listen to Ronan Browne who's an uilleann piper.

My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.

I knew I wanted to act from a very young age - from about nine, really - but I didn't know how to go about it. I had no idea. The world was a much bigger place then.

Early on, I didn't intend to have children. I thought it was too difficult a world for them. But then it happened, and I am thrilled to have them now.

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio.

I'm fascinated by the business of belief, obviously, because it's so ever present with humanity anyway. And, you know, when you have science, which constantly talks of proofs, you have religion, which constantly talks of beliefs and faith and so on.

The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they're not too ridiculously expensive.

My surname certainly suggests a man whose destiny has always been injury.

I'd love to be one of those people who, whenever you see them, you feel pleased.

I've done a couple of conferences where you sit and sign autographs for people, and then you have photographs taken with them and a lot of them all dressed up in alien suits or 'Doctor Who' whatevers. I was terrified of doing it because I thought they'd all be loonies, but they are absolutely, totally charming as anything. It's great fun.

Everybody's got to work with Roger Corman. You can't leave out that experience.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

The first thing you have to get used to in any kind of acting is the ability to make a fool of yourself. If you haven't learnt how to make a fool of yourself, you shouldn't be on the boards. That's absolutely what it's all about.

To me, nothing ever feels like a sure thing. I cling to that because it's very important you don't ever think anything is a sure thing.

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought.

Everyone I've ever played has been flawed.

If I'm doing a play, 30 to 40 percent of the people that come to the stage door have pictures of 'Alien' for me to autograph. And usually, the photos are pretty gory ones.

I think love can be really tough. Because it involves ultimately an honesty to the nth degree that you are capable of. Once said, you've lost your deposit. It's best if you don't say it.