“Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It’s harder.”

Sometimes it’s right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.

In England, it’s now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It’s not even on my passport anymore. They’ve taken Mister away from me.

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.

As an actor there’s no autonomy, unless you’re prepared to risk the possibility of starving.

I was fortunate as a young actor, to go straight to the RSC, where I learned that being an actor can bring with it wonderful responsibilities.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

Some of my oldest friends are actors. But that’s not the only place my friends come from.

Johnny Depp is one of my favorite actors because he takes chances.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true… I’ve never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

You don’t have a lot of time to massage a scene into oblivion. It’s like you do it, you get a couple of good takes, and then you move on, so you have to be very spontaneous as an actor and have done your homework, and I like that.

I know actors come around and they always talk like that, but I don’t do publicity if I don’t like the film.