“You can’t get blase about something you haven’t done yet.”

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, ‘How much is that?’

Maybe it’s time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day.

I feel like 35. At 35 you’re old enough to know something and young enough to look forward to what you can do with the knowledge. So I stayed at 35!

The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who’s happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I’ve had success as I’ve gotten older, because I’m able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you.

In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.

I’ve never taken drugs – if you take a drug of your choice, you get some ecstatic feeling.

I never listened to the people who said I should give it up, which is the main advice I got.

Obsession is a young man’s game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

Acting is not a competition; everything must be done for the good of the film or else everybody loses.

I don’t see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Be patient.Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.

Mental toughness is a state of mind – you could call it character in action.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them.

You can start changing our world for the better daily, no matter how small the action.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Every action has its pleasures and its price.