I'm very good at being out of work.

With your own children, you love them immediately - and with grandchildren, it's exactly the same.

You can't converse with Alzheimer's sufferers in the way you do with others; the dialogue tends to go round in circles.

With all the lines I have to learn for TV scripts, I don't think I have any problems with forgetfulness - that's brain exercise enough for me.

My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.

Walking is my main method of relaxation. I don't go over my lines or try to solve the world's problems, I just enjoy the scenery and the wildlife.

People think I'm thick because of the characters I play. I think I'm brighter than the characters. Well, I hope I am.

I've been going to Bamburgh for holidays since I was a child.

My family have been around Northumberland for five generations.

The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory.

Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

I'm leaving because I want to spend more time with my wife in Chicago.

I want to be respected as a writer and, like I said, I was really sick of people saying I was a two dimensional character. I want more to my legacy, I guess.

The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body's reaction to what the voice in the head is saying.

I didn't think we'd get to this point that we're at now, but I was ready to lead If we got to this point.

The hardest part for me during the creation stage is actually putting words on paper that make sense and tell my story the way I see it. I sometimes feel I am slogging through quicksand when I write.

When I was in the studio with Madonna, we would work 12-hour days. If you want to work with the best, then that's what you have to do.

It is an inwariable rule with the dealers to praise the bad points and let the good 'uns speak for themselves.