I like to take it easy.
It's such a pleasant surprise when you come on set and you find someone in charge like Ken Branagh or James Ivory. You know that you're going to do a day's work and at the end of it, it's going to be good.
We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist.
I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor.
I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.
I was bullied as a boy - lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.
I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.
I come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like being, wasting my time with - life's too short.
We're always looking over our shoulders, 'what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one - am I making the right career move?' When you're young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.
I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.
I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.
Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.
I've had no contact with my daughter for years. That's her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don't want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.
I don't like freeloaders; I don't like people who are negative.
I don't have a vast longing for the stage.
The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don't dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.
I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.
I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.
I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.
I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.
