“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 not famous for my back story investigations; I’m lucky that I work with good writers and it’s usually in the script.

I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t even own a computer.

Try to be in the day. Try to not have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow.”

Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect.

As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I’m greedy for beauty.

I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn’t operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it’s actually also true – if I want to appear in public I want to look my best.

I don’t even own a car.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they’d arrest you for crimes against acting.

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I’d meet beautiful women in the rain.

In one way, an attempt to reproduce the way people actually speak, but it’s not just an attempt at naturalism. It’s stylised and it’s heightened, to great effect. It’s elegant and it’s funny and that’s the way to my heart, frankly.

Whatever you do, don’t smoke’. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.

You have all these plans to act, and maybe do it rather elegantly, and then they turn the rain machine on.

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It’s almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.

I love imaginative representations of a possible near-future, where you look at the technology and you think, “Well, yeah, that could really nearly be true.” I like those kinds of backgrounds.

You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don’t have enough dopamine to feel good.

Losers walking around with money in their pockets are always dangerous, not to be trusted. Some horse always reaches out and grabs them.

Trust everyone, but always cut the cards.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics.

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.

With Jane Birkin, we had a scene from a film called Jane B. by Agnès V. – a portrait I made in ’87. We had a casino scene, surrealistic, in which we had some naked people gambling. Jane Birkin was the card dealer and I was the player.

Suspense is torture … but delightful–or there’d be no gambling in the world.