My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.

For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it.

Now I can see I was at fault for not being more considerate, but when we were doing the show I didn't think it was my job to be considerate to other people.

Working on a film, you don't get time to develop rivalries, but the theatre is like a little village, and the differences between me, Lionel and Georgia grew.

My portrayal of Fagin was all to do with my experience in comedy and revue.

Ive no regrets. You take responsibility for your actions.

I'd wanted to be an actor from the age of five.

Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

If we destroy the biosphere, then mankind will die. We all waste our time worrying about stupid wars and petty jealousy and greed, and all the time, we're sitting on a time bomb.

Life is loves shrinewhen you're my valentine.

Let us be of good cheer however remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.

You don't want to make an enemy of Piers Morgan.

I think that experiencing through art is a wonderful way to expand the horizon and everything around it.

True beauty is a ray That springs from the sacred depths of the soul, and illuminates the body, just as life springs from the kernel of a stone and gives colour and scent to a flower.

I started out as a football player. I liked to inflict pain. In basketball, it was the same thing.

My combined experiences, doing different films, has made me very concerned about and interested in how you protect your creative self when the work, by default, is going to be judged by people.

You don't realize that when you're young, and you're surprised there's a lot of people at your gig - you just think it's general British-press hype.