It's a question of keeping one's eyes and ears open and watching how other people play the game. They're watching me too, to see what my attitude is like.

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

I'm playing one of the principal roles, which gives you more clout and more confidence.

I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.

I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.

A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.

I spent a lot of time [between takes] apologising to Peter Dinklage [Dance's on-screen son, Tyrion Lannister] because I treat him appallingly.

You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.

A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?

Power is always a corrupting influence. In this mythical time - let's call it medieval, feudal - people in power are dictatorial and don't want their positions of power to be threatened.

When you get to a certain age, the work begins to thin out.

There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.

A different direction defines what to me is real and to you is hooey.

A magical universe was so terrifying because it was so irrational. There was no cause and effect anywhere.

'Yes' is the mother of all positive words, next to 'love.' Maybe 'love' is the father of all positive words.

There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.

I believe I am entitled like any other person to have the presumption of innocence.

Life is too short to learn German

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

The way young people are joining communities online, and agreeing and separating themselves and creating their own facts about things like vaccination, is worrying.