The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed.

People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.

Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.

I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

It was only one man who had gone, but it felt like forever, something so permanent and unstoppable that it blasted her. If she were a tree, she would drop all her leaves.

Few great things are achieved effortlessly.

Ah, why should life all labor be?

I think that I failed by not studying more, and praying more, and spending more time with my family.

Anytime a fan touches you, you have the right to beat the hell out of him

I feel like doing theatre helps my on-camera work and my on-camera work kind of helps my theatre work. So I love to be able to bounce through the mediums.

The work of God can only be carried on by the power of God. The church is a spiritual organism fighting spiritual battles: only spiritual power can make it perform as God ordained.

Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not.

In the end, everything came down to money. It came down to what a person actually did, as opposed to who they thought they were.

I feel a bit awkward playing in a red shirt out at Wimbledon. But I don't dislike it.