I told myself that I would not go back to the camps as an actor ever again, that I was very frightened of wearing a yellow star. It was fear, it was cowardice, I was.
When Attenborough asked me to do Gandhi it was almost like stepping off one boat and stepping on to another, even though both boats are going at 60 miles per hour.
I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don’t understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.
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.
Shock is shock. Your body goes into shock, regardless of it being real blood or fake blood. The mind sends powerful messages to all the various glands and secretions in the body. It’s impossible trying to act it; it just happens. It’s a very important question: no acting.
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.
