“Mr. Bean’: Childish, anarchic behaviour will always be funny.”

People think because I can make them laugh on the stage, I’ll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn’t the case at all. I am essentially a rather quiet, dull person who just happens to be a performer.

I’m as poor as a church mouse, that’s just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.

I’m not looking for anything other than an interesting role to play.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

I’m not a collector. I don’t like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate.

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time.

Mr. Bean is essentially a child trapped in the body of a man. All cultures identify with children in a similar way, so he has this bizarre global outreach.

I have always worried about things more than I should.

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don’t really need to explain very much at all.

A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.

My personal problem is that I take the business of film-making so seriously that I find it very difficult to relax.

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.

When I was doing Bean more than I’ve done him in the last few years, I did strange things – like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.

The best way to behave is to misbehave.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Well behaved women do not make history.

All people are the same; only their habits differ.

Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind.

There are only two ways to influence human behaviour: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.