I am a coward, basically, but one of the things about acting is that you are always putting yourself through yet another test.

It would've been hard to do something else, to as it were, run away from the circus and become an accountant.

At heart, this job is about continuing to make great theatre for the people of Sheffield - a city I've known and loved since childhood.

Of course 'Hamlet' is a debate about the nature and morality of revenge and whether it is right to do something to assuage your angry feelings.

The idea that if you are very clever you shouldn't be an actor would be laughable in Russia.

We'll be back. I promise you that.

Most good art is left wing. It's a moot point whether there is any good right-wing art.

Where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.

My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope.

I absolutely love working with my dad because there is such an ease about it, and I also love his company.

I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers.

The trouble with believing conspiracies is you start seeing them everywhere, right? And everything becomes a part of them. But, of course, the trouble with not believing them is becoming a dupe.

I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.

Friendship is love without its flowers or veil.

The fact is he [John F.Kennedy] always had to have somebody around besides Jackie [Kennedy]. Whatever their relationship, he wanted company. I think it gets back to all those years in a hospital bed.

Once you go alien, you really do never go back.

But there's times when I like to find the strange angles to something. People go, 'I heard a lot of jokes like that, but that's one of the most interesting takes I heard.' That's what I try to do.

Beware of men who use words that relate pejoratively to females when describing the 'other side.

Like many a modern parent, I had no clear notion of how to help my most troubled child.

Find one person in the audience and sing to them with all of your heart. And then cast a spell over them. Hoss, if you can't do it with feeling - don't.

I'm the last in the line of Russells and Chamberlains.