I've played a lot of roles I haven't wanted to play, either because they needed someone in the theatre or because they couldn't do it without me 'cause they don't have anyone else the right age.

I believe in divine inspiration and things like that and I really relish a good, attentive, participating audience.

My first acting class was taught by a little known playwright, David Mamet, who then cast me in my first play, opposite John Malkovich.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

It was post war. It was very gray, very dreary. Everything was still rationed when I first saw the United States in 1951. I went over to visit my sister who was a war bride.

I'm not intimidated by other actors at all - or directors. I don't care who they are. But I am intimidated by writers. I hold them in the highest esteem.

I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano.

I think the Democratic Party realizes, having lost two presidential elections, we need to do a better job of creating a farm team.

I belonged to Stratford Children's Theater when I was a boy growing up in Manchester. Even then, I was always doing character parts.

People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.

I'm a dog person; I've had dogs all my life.

A happy marriage- a love match- is something overwhelming, and overpowering.

There were many tears, many unsure times, many troubled moments. The fun memories were only a few, but even so, those memories will shine bright like stardust, and continue to shine on in my heart.

Stand up

Once you have six children, you're committed.

I've fallen back on this periodically, although I must say that getting out of the grocery business ranked right up there with getting out of the army as one of the happier experiences of my life.

And of course, pop music is all about memorability and simplicity and positive messages and a little dash of joy.

Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love.

There should essentially be no limits to the voluntary definition of marriage.

Even when I rehearse down in the bowels of the Metropolitan Opera, you can't help but think why The Phantom of the Opera was inspired by what happens in the bowels of the opera house.