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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Everybody, I think, that was in 'Harry Potter' was certainly introduced to an enormous lot of young people.

My criteria when looking for a role is that I will do anything that stands the chance of succeeding on the level it is intended to. After that, if it's a part I can do something personal with.

The difference between anger and deep remorse - remorse is much fatter. It's a deeper feeling altogether. Anger is too easy an escape for my money.

Punk recognised the fact that the establishment had no room. There's no point in saying you've got the establishment wrong because they hadn't got the establishment wrong, they'd got it absolutely dead on.

It's an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.

I seem to watch less and less television. The best thing in 'Downton Abbey' is Penelope Wilton. She is always worth the watch.

I think you can get better in mathematics on a school level, but when you're talking about being a mathematician, I think that's definitely a gift of genes or whatever, you know? Whatever your pool is.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Ultimately, the film industry has always pushed out its biggies, and I don't have a problem with that. I just wish that we'd spend more time nurturing the smaller ones.

I have died in so many spectacular ways, and I remember shooting them all, too. I imagine all those deaths will flash in front of me when I'm on my death bed, faced with the real thing.

Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.

I've never been pushy. People have said I should have been, more, but I'm not sure. I've watched hugely ambitious people: the minute they've got a success, they know where it's going, they know how to deal with it, and it all happens for them. Great. But that's not the way I - well, I don't like to use the word 'operate'.

Each day, as you get older, there is a new perspective on life. It's a progression of some sort.

Also the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realise that it is going to come to an end at some stage.

For everything that you find dreadful, there's usually something that is rather marvelous as well.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Picasso was hugely innovative, and, wow, did he have facility, amazing ability, but I don't think he painted a masterpiece.

Religious people know deep down that that is the most vulnerable area of their lives, and when others question it, they are liable to hit out and feel insulted. You know it is absolutely without proof, yet people still commit themselves totally to this belief. They cannot refute it because it is so central to their lives.