I have lots of favourite memories but I can`t say that I have a favourite film.

I`ve spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That`s where the filmmakers come from, it`s where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.

If I`m in theatre, cinema doesn`t even cross my mind. Similarly when I`m making a film, theatre doesn`t cross my mind.

People like us, who turn ourselves inside out for a living, we get into an emotional tussle rather than a marriage. It`s fire I`m playing with and it isn`t surprising I`m not the ideal companion on a daily basis. But it takes two. I mean, Christ, I haven`t forced anybody.

If and "only" are the two words in the English language that should never be put together.

It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don`t have any ambitions. I`ve never been that kind of performer.

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

You know, I`ve never guided my life. I`ve just been whipped along by the waves I`m sitting in. I don`t make plans at all. Plans are what make God laugh. You can make plans, you can make so many plans, but they never go right, do they?

Someone once asked me, "Is there anything you regret?" and I said, "Everything!" Whatever you do, there was always a better choice.

My mother`s father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

Also the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realise that it is going to come to an end at some stage.

St Michael`s was one of those very rarefied, very Anglo-Catholic establishments where they rejoiced in more religious paraphernalia and theatricality than the entire Vatican. More incense-swinging, more crucifixes, more gold tassels, more rose petals, more holy mothers, more God knows what. Three times a day they played the Angelus. When you heard it, you had to stop whatever you were doing, do the Hail Marys in your head, and then return to what you were doing. Like it would come in the middle of a Latin class. I`m just conjugating the love verb, amo, amas, amat, and doingggg! you have to stand up, go through the whole Angelus, mother-of-God thing and then crack on with amamus, amatis, amant. Sir! Because, if you didn`t, Whack! Cane. Belt. Education by fear. And the really funny thing was they wouldn`t tolerate bullying between peers. Prefects could bash you with a slipper, but you weren`t allowed to give each other a rough time. Like who do you think you are? You haven`t yet earned the privilege of being violent.

I`ve done some stinkers in the cinema. You can`t regret it; there are always reasons for doing something, even if it`s just the location.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don`t necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they`re all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

My parents` lot had literally crawled away from the second world war, taking with them two vital commodities by way of a survival mechanism: respectability and security. It was odd, coming from a Christian household, but the big thing was about not being what they called "common". I got all that, "Don`t play with him, he`s common". I had a friend called Grenville Barker who`d come round sometimes and play football on the lawn, but not very often. And I wasn`t allowed to go to his home very often because they were working class. He was what my mother called a bad influence. Everything had to do with influence. My mother was desperate I should be properly influenced, have a proper, received accent, be sent away to school at eight. So all you can do is go into yourself, immerse yourself in your own life.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I`m sorry to tell you I can`t describe.

[on David Niven] Now if I could be David Niven, I`d be content. He knows how to live life. He`s charming, he`s amusing, he`s so up. An up man! I`m sure he`s also complicated, but he never lays it on you.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I`m still embarrassed at the word.

There is no such thing as all good people and all bad people. We`re all capable. It exists within us. In war-time, as we`re finding out now, things that have been on camera, our wonderful troops, who we felt were absolutely impeccable, were as guilty as everybody else of. If you`re given license to kill, it`s going to release many an evil.

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn`t really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio.

When you`re really working well with a director then you can be as outrageous as you like and so can he. And there`s no worry about it.

I`ve always felt, and I think I`m qualified to say so because I`ve won a few awards, that it`s a terrible shame to put something in competition with something else to be able to sell something. Confronted with films like Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Capote (2005) and the Johnny Cash movie (Walk the Line (2005)), you can`t pit one against the other. Films are not made to be competitive in that sense.

It`s an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.

If you do an interview in 1960, something it`s bound to change by the year 2000. And if it doesn`t, then there`s something drastically wrong.

I couldn`t possibly do that. To be able to understand being five years old and write as if you were that age through the book till you get to that extraordinary flowery-pretentious age of the 18-/19-year-old. It`s so complicated when you`re dealing with memory because of the perspective and how it keeps changing. You have to learn how you see things. It`s about...lordy-me, I`ve forgotten the word. This time in the morning. Never mind, come to me in a moment, let`s have more coffee...conditioning.

As Beckett said, it`s not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

It`s quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

Also, the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realize that it is going to come to an end at some stage.

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.

My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don`t ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.