“Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,”Easy” doesn’t enter into grown-up life.”

It’s much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Use the difficulties – if you can’t avoid them

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

When you reach the top, that’s when the climb begins.

I don’t have any regrets because I’m very optimistic, and live each day as though it’s the last.

It’s vital to have your own space so you aren’t constantly in each other’s pockets.

I’m every bourgeois nightmare – a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I’m pig-headed.

You start pretending to have fun, you might have a little by accident.

I don’t think human beings are bad. They’re weak. And that’s what makes ’em bad.

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you’ve had a life like mine, you have to.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don’t have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it’s a nightmare. So, I like film – nice short takes.

My understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasures.

Don’t sit as if you have nothing to say. You should be bursting with things to say. You just choose at this particular place and time, not to say them.

I’m the audience’s representative on earth.

The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.

I still have a spiritual base and a spiritual foundation. And my conversation with God is very open-ended. I pray for humility, honestly, because it’s very easy to be caught up in this world.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Comparisons are easily done, once you’ve had a taste of perfection.

A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.

So basically I did this whole show carrying 100lbs, looking out of one eye, dancing – and then my tits explode at the end. It’s not as easy as it looks!

If you’re a leader, you lead the way. Not just on the easy ones. You take the tough ones too.