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.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

I like the physical activity of gardening. It's kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding.

Film is not literature - the image on screen is the information you get.

I have lots of favourite memories but I can't say that I have a favourite film.

I'm essentially the result of other people's imagination. And that's fine. Because of other people's imagination, I've played parts I would never have thought I could do. Still, I've never had a hankering or an ambition for any particular role.

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared.

Half the stuff I have done which has been successful would never have been made if it had been shown to focus groups.

My mother's father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

If you do an interview in 1960, something it's bound to change by the year 2000. And if it doesn't, then there's something drastically wrong.

I knew I didn't want to pursue an academic career at all, which, of course, my father would have loved me to have done. I didn't want to go to university. The only other thing I could do was paint, and so I went to art school because they couldn't conceive of how one would be an actor.

I don't care about the length of anything I play, as long as it's a good character.

I'm not really a big musical fan. I enjoyed 'West Side Story' when it came out, but it gets a bit tired in the end.

Everything that came to me, in terms of the ritzier side of performing, was a plus.

I'm horribly self-critical.

Parents are the worst teachers, if they are good at it and you're not. My father thought I was the densest offspring he could have produced.

I can't say that I wouldn't prefer to make small films, basically because I think they are probably more interesting in terms of the material. But every now and again, it's quite good to do a big one.

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time; to say 'high Anglo-Catholic' would be a real English understatement.

My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

You can't lose your concentration at all. And there are times when you're on the stage, and you've got silence, which is wonderful, but you have to have the confidence to make you realize it's fine. You can't suddenly wobble and think, 'They're not interested.'

I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.

It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don't have any ambitions. I've never been that kind of performer.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.

I'm very much of the opinion that to work is better than not to work.

I say you play a part, you don't work one.

I don't know whether I inspire anything in anyone.

I didn't consider myself to be pretty, not at all.

I don't think you automatically become an enlightened person because you are a daddy. But they will change you, of course - their understanding of you puts you in a different place.