Quotes

I got briefly mistaken for someone who might be good in bed, which was very, very good.

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I'd meet beautiful women in the rain.

I've always slightly worried about the kids who play football around my house. They know I'm an actor, but felt sorry for me because they'd never seen anything I've done.

"The British consul shipped me home for 25 quid and I had to pay my father back, he was a wee bit cross." (about being in Paris)

You come to realise there is this huge disparity between what you think about yourself and your work and what other people think about you and your work, at first you either think they're insane or that it's a conspiracy to make you look stupid. Or maybe, just maybe, they're right, and you're sometimes quite good at what you do.

There's a bit in Performance (1970), one of my favourite films - with James Fox giving one of my favourite performances - and there's a scene where he's getting ready, and there's a bit where he arranges his Playboy lighter, and the magazines, and the ashtray, perfectly symmetrically aligned on the coffee table, the funky coffee table. And then he gets his tie and his shirt absolutely fabulous, and the hair is right - and I love it with all my heart, and I love the whole movie, and I love him in it... And then, he looks in the mirror and says: 'I am a bullet.' And my heart goes boom.

I don't smoke now, which is marvellous. My only addictions are caffeine and sugar.

I even wear a suit for improvisation workshops, rolling around. Well, acting's a white-collar job, you know? You wear a suit.

I hate design which has nothing to do with function. When I first went to work and had digs, I would arrange that there was nothing in my room, just a bed and a chair. It was like a cell. And I once saw this thing on the telly where there were these two guys who lived in a minimalist house. Absolutely nothing in it, but they had a deal that if they left their shoes on the stairs in an interesting shape, and they both agreed, they could leave them there. I understand that.

There was a time when you were supposed to question everything the director said, to create some kind of conflict, out of which creativity would be born. But I love it when they tell you what to do, you know: "Start there, walk over there, say the line and I'll shout: Cut!" I think it's groovy. When we were filming with Stephen Poliakoff, his first note to me - he prefaced it with: "That was marvellous", which is always a good start - anyway, his note was: "Don't wiggle your eyes about so much," and you know, my heart leapt. Because I know that. I know how to not make my eyes wiggle about.

You know, there may be periods when you're unemployed. Great. You'll never know what will happen from one minute to the next. Yeah, fabulous. You don't know what money you're going to be making in 25 years' time. Yeah, baby! It's like being a gambler, and when I was 18, that was music.

If you're in a play and you have the same jokes to deliver, eight times a week, it's endlessly fascinating, just trying to hit it each time, and maybe a little bit quicker, a little bit later, trying to feel the air in which you're about to place it. To have 400 people laugh at the same time, you would go to your grave trying to get it right. And it's also very glamorous when it's on film, because you're not there. I love it when a producer phones up and says: "It played very well in France. They were laughing." In France.

I am a world-class procrastinator. I'm only an actor because I've been putting off being a writer for 35 years.

I speculate to be sociable, but it's a very big deal for me that any work I do should be well received. As for how people generally perceive me, I don't know.

The director (Gore Verbinski) asked me to do Dutch, and I don't do Dutch. So I decided on Scottish. - on his Scottish accent for Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006).

I used to think that prizes were demeaning and divisive, until I got one, and now they seem sort of meaningful and real. (On winning a Golden Globe in 2007)

[on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," after having been asked about having "developed" a drinking problem during the 1970s and '80s] I don't want to talk about this at length. But I will say a couple of things, and if you'll forgive me, I won't say anything further. One is that I didn't develop a drinking problem. I am one of those people who is built in such a way that I have, from the very beginning, an unfortunate relationship with alcohol. So there was never a good time for me to have a drink. Then there's one further thing I will say, but I'd rather not say anything further, just for reasons that we don't have to go into it. Not because I have any shame in this area; I'm a sober alcoholic, it's a perfectly respectable thing to be and I've made arrangements about it. But I will say that I used to drink and it was absolutely terrible, and now I don't drink and it's absolutely marvelous. And that's as much as I'd like to say. Thanks.

[Asked about the Lord of the Rings films] I haven't seen them. Someone told me Peter Jackson distributed copies of the radio version to the cast and crew. And since I get 0.00001% in royalties every time someone buys the CD, I've been getting £40 instead of £20 over the last couple of years!

If you were asked by your grandchildren what developments in your lifetime made you most proud, one of them might be the civil rights movement in America and the other would be the emancipation of gay men and women.

Gay men and women were marginalised and victimised . When I was young, people still went to jail for any public display of affection between people of the same sex. It seems bizarre to say that, I've never understood it. And now I can stand in a town hall in London and watch two male friends get married and say I love you in a public place, and I find it almost overwhelmingly moving.

[deflecting a personal question from a journalist] If I was in a relationship and I were to tell you about it I would involve your readers in something approaching gossip, and I know they would never forgive me for that.

I will say that I was approached. But I didn't want to be the Doctor. No disrespect to Doctor Who (2005) or anything, I just think that it comes with too much baggage.

Acting is acting. You don't have to feel stuff. Any insistence that actors should feel things - you know you're talking to an amateur if that's their suggestion.