A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.
I can't try to convert anybody. It's not in me to do that. But my faith has given me such an appreciation of people and meaningful relationships, and a world view which I didn't have before. And although I will fail every day, it gives me something to aspire to.
I'm never bored, never ever bored. If I've got a day off I'll sit in a cafe and watch and observe. I'm a great observer.
I am very traditional as a man. I am not modern and never have been. I think I was born 50 years of age and out of my time.
Deep inside, I am desperate to do comedy.
Although I'm a very emotional man, I just can't have blind faith, I have to find out for myself.
I don't really want people to see me. I'm not into stardom.
My fun as an actor and my task as an actor is to transform myself to become other people. I enjoy becoming characters but I don't enjoy becoming caricatures. The research I do is only necessary in so far as we move into other dimensions.
I love playing real people. It's a huge challenge and responsibility which I take on board and which I relish. It also scares me to death. Give me a totally fictional character and I don't have the same sort of responsibility. If, though, I play Sigmund Freud or Robert Maxwell or whoever then there is a responsibility.
When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film.
I think I've grown up in an era where character acting on film has become less desirable for the producers and directors and therefore the audience. They have got used to the people that those actors really are.
In so many roles I've played the outsider. As an outsider, you have more energy to succeed simply because you are an outsider. There are scripts floating around but they're not coming my way and I think that I am getting a little bit too old to play Napoleon. But if I was ever offered the role I would grab it.
I became fascinated by the fact that people write to give away rather than write to be read. It's the difference between playwrights and novelists.
Napoleon was one of the most complex personalities in history.He was ruthless, small in stature, a bully, vulnerable, unfaithful and I think he was the first person to shoot prisoners of war so that he had food for his own army. He was absolutely single-minded but he also obviously had charm. How else could a man like him have come back as he did and have the nation rise to a man!
What we're doing is saying what happens with the establishment and how are we as ordinary human beings are used as pawns. What do we really know about what goes on! We think we are a democracy.... Are we? I'm not so sure.
I'm really not interested in showing me or playing me. My gift as an actor, given to me, is to be able to become other people.
In The Godfather, for instance, they say they won't deal drugs because they have a code of behaviour. He is the last remnants of that. So playing someone like that, who is also in pain with his kidney stone, means you're beginning to find a dimension of the guy who is king and all show and the private guy who is in pain.
I love seeing my characters big up there and I would have liked to have reached a different public in movies from my television public. There's still a part of me that wishes that my character range could be seen on the big screen. Rather, as Rod Steiger was, because he was a big influence on me - about becoming other people and not worrying about your own glory or self esteem but sacrificing yourself to become somebody else.
When I was 18 and not sure whether I wanted to be an actor, I realised that a playwright has no voice without an actor. That's my reason for acting: to get that character as right as possible for my writer. And I have never changed my philosophy.
It's an honour to have such a wonderful international cast on board for this world famous murder mystery. Writer Stewart Harcourt has created an exquisite script. His attention to detail is impeccable.
I think its very dangerous, the idea of celebrity - you have to be constantly controversial to maintain the status of celebrity. Reality TV is the death of entertainment - its just mindless TV but popular because of its voyeuristic nature, and people are very voyeuristic.
I love music, especially classical like Verdi; it's a great way to relax.
There are clues in the script... he will say "I think drugs are immoral"'... but the guy who says that kills, tortures, pimps and has whores working for him. There is this strange morality going on, which is rather like the Mafia.
The great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.
I'm really into my photography and am trying to catch up with digital generation - I was used to the old 35mm cameras.
