“The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.”

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.

Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.

As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.

There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

Well, it’s wonderful to be identified strongly with my work.

There is always something about the villains that I’m able to play, quote unquote, that isn’t villainous.

I have never felt bereft of anything.

I just loved playing a man who was unafraid of making an idiot of himself in the process of falling in love. I found that admirable.

The biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age.

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.

I’m interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.

I’m trying to capture something more fragile than a regular story. I love what people bring me.

I’d done a few short films before and thought acting was really creative, but when I worked with those guys, I was just like: “Wow!” They had such fun and freedom. They were trying things and stretching themselves. It was so inspiring that I was like: “I definitely want to do this!”

I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers.

We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that’s going on between the East and West.

It’s just that song, and I’m trying to really sound like what the song is about.

We try to avoid the single-building syndrome. You have to look at the big picture. If you try to put social and cultural development ahead of economic development, it doesn’t work. You have to do it all together.

I see all these students, and I admire them – they’re trying to learn something, they go to school, they do film school, they go on shoots, they help.