“The job is the same – to attempt to make it sound like you’ve never said it before and as if it’s just occurred to you. And that’s the same whether you’re on camera or whether you’re on stage in a room full of people.”

If you ask any actor “What single thing would make you really, really happy?” Among the top five things they’d say is not having to audition anymore.

All actors who have been around for a long time, which I have, and have been skint for long periods, which I have, find it difficult to turn down jobs. If I turn anything down my stomach turns over. I feel sick. It feels like gambling.

I’m crazy about James Brown. I’m crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.

The most difficult part, when you decide to make running a part of your life style, is the basic initial commitment.

The degree of notoriety I have is fine and easy. There’s nothing hysterical about it.

When people warned me there would be long periods out of work if I became an actor, I couldn’t keep a straight face because that was exactly what I had in mind.

One is that you legislate according to natural selection, the other is that you don’t. You have compassion, you try and help people. It’s a fundamental clash between two people who happen to love each other, which complicates everything.

I don’t normally watch films I’m in because I’m squeamish about that and it takes me quite a long time to recover and I have to go to work. I’m not being coy or cute, but it’s just true.

I’m probably the only person who actually remembers pirate radio.

I got briefly mistaken for someone who might be good in bed, which was very, very good.

If I ruled the world, every woman would have a Chanel suit in her wardrobe.

I don’t want to associate myself with any specific group of politicians.

I do think 3D has seriously improved, since I was a boy. It’s fabulous.

When you are in something that you’re proud of and it’s funny and it’s a good night out and all of those things, there’s nothing quite like it. The rewards are proportionate to the amount of alarm and distress it causes you.

Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.

I like being in kids’ movies, and I like being in family movies.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

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

It really is a pleasure to work with someone who you admire. Whatever you do in front of the camera, and I don’t know what it is, but actors have this thing that you recognize someone that makes you better. When you do that, it’s a great feeling.

I generally prefer to stay quiet before a performance. I don’t like television cameras, but an interview is OK.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

I’ve fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

Here’s the beauty of a camera: you don’t have to come up with words for what you’re looking at… Maybe another angle is needed sometimes. When we’re burned out from writing, we can photograph or draw, look at the world in a different way, and photographers could try writing what they see.