I only do the press for the work. I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote or endorse things or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.

You fire blanks, but the guns eject real brass, hot cartridges. They're, like, 400 degrees.

People say I have a scary face. I find that to be a mixed compliment.

It's great to sit and talk about the films and the people I work with, rather than where I buy my socks or whatever.

I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote, or endorse things, or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.

I really love living in cities where the people living above, below and next to you are from totally different worlds to you.

I don't think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it's shot. The studio system doesn't really exist.

I like Scottish people because they feel very true. They're always level and straight. They get a reputation for being hardened because of it, but I find them to be scrupulously honest people.

My auditions for drama school were miserable, but one thing I had on my side, although I had no experience or skill or training, was that I wanted to learn everything.

I'm only really interested in taking a part if it's nothing like me.

It's a vain craft, acting.

'Nicholas Nickleby' is 800 pages long. At one time, the theater production was 15 hours long. So it's an interesting process, about what you leave out and what you select.

What I strive to do is to make the theater experience something that people remember and recall rather than dismiss because it was less like their everyday experiences. So, I'm less interested in internal emotionalism and much more in making the audience laugh and cry by the devices that we use as theater actors.

'Nicholas Nickleby' was the best example, where 43 people could make an audience of 1,500 look at a fingernail at any given moment. It was so controlled, and yet it was a group of disparate individuals. It was a happy, constructive time, and it seemed to be an active discussion of what makes the theater work.

I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.

If you live in the States, you have to join a gym.

'Waiting for Godot,' when it first came out in 1950, was a very different sort of play to the plays that were in the West End at that time in London, because most of those plays were what we call drawing-room comedies.

I don't know why, but I was really good in that first play.

I've learned from the greatest people, and I've got wonderful things to pass on.

Gerry Schoenfeld told me 'Les Parents Terribles' was not going to sell, even though we had Kathleen Turner and Jude Law in the cast. So we called it 'Indiscretions.'

Daring to love someone is something we all do.

History is with us until we learn from the suffering of the past.

I'm astonished to say, but people are really pleased to hear what happened to me, the way I got a little bit more confident, the people I've met, and the things I didn't know.

I've been with Shakespeare all my life.