Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.
I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
I admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.
Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
My view of actors is that basically they're all harmless lunatics who'd be on the psychiatrist's couch, except that we get this sort of catharsis every six months or so, and we go and be absolutely someone else.
I've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royce, so it was cheaper to insure a chauffeur. I never want to drive again. My mind is always on other things. I hate parking, and I'm very short-tempered and would get road rage, I'm sure.
My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.
I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.
In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.
Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.
The first thing I'll do if I want to look really crappy is, I don't wear any makeup at all.
I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.
Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
I'm trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.
I don't want to sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I do think there should be some sort of national service for young men.
Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.
In my early days, I didn't know what a good film or a bad film was, and I was trying to make some money. As it happens I was lucky. I made some good films.
