I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.

I think A Midsummer Night's Dream would be terrific because of the transformations that occur. Or The Tempest, things like that. Extraordinary larger than life or supernatural element.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.

There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.

Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.

I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.

Actors are the best and the worst of people. They're like kids. When they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad they're very very naughty.

It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.

We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.

Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.

My definition of success is control.

There are some amazing stories from all over this country, where people's work and contribution has been acknowledged. To be part of that is an absolutely fantastic feeling.

I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet.

I don't know that there is too far, actually. I think there's only too bad. If it's bad you've gone too far.

I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.

I'm basically quite a cheerful person.

If it's good art, it's good.

If you've done a brilliant version it becomes something else.

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.