“There are some directors, lesser in confidence or skill, who make the actor feel very uncomfortable because you feel you’re auditioning for them, every day, and that’s a terrible feeling on the set.”

It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

In cinema, the leading player is the director.

I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it’s such an extraordinary part of our lives.

Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.

What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it’s a science. It’s neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

I’m very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.

I don’t honestly think people know what acting is.

I never read anything in print about me. It started with not reading reviews and with the greatest respect to my publicist here, I never read interviews. I was there when I gave them. I never read reviews. I was there when I did the jobs – so I’m totally immune. I live in a bubble.

That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere.

There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.

John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy… It’s a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.

Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.

My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.

[Fifty Shades Darker director] James Foley directed Fear. And that’s what I love about this film, because it has a real sexy thriller element about it.

Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices.

There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it’s the closest I’ll ever come to being able to be a stand up.

On the stage you get the chance to do all that, to analyze and build a part, to react, to contribute something no one else can-not the author, not even the director.

And my feeling was if I was going to succeed as a director, I had to just be a director and give up the safety net of being a cameraman.

When you work with a great director, you realise you are far from being a director.

When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn’t want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both.