[on RADA] I was asked to leave. They said I had no talent. I disliked it intensely there. It was all filled with acting students who thought they were so grand and knew it all. It made me feel ridiculously stupid.

I always think instinct is more interesting than anything you can think up. I mistrust and am rather bored with actors who are of the Stanislavski school who think about detail. God almighty. Children just do it when they act. I think we should too - jump in and do it.

[on Trading Places (1983)] My agent said, 'If you accept the terms of the contract they are offering you, they will despise you. I know the Americans. You are not asking for enough money or first-class transportation or a very good hotel. Your per diem is ridiculous and your billing is non-existent.' Five days later they came back with double everything. I had a flight on the Concorde, the best hotel, star billing, everything. There's sort of a gratitude in their eyes that you got twice the amount of cash out of them because they think they are buying something. If they think they got you cheap, they are worried about it.

[on A Murder of Quality (1991)] I thought Guinness [Alec Guinness] was brilliant as Smiley. But I thought he was very, very dry. I decided to play him far more eccentric and with as much comedy as I could.

I think you can be terribly overexposed. I've been always very careful in my career to do theatre, it takes you out of the television eye and people are glad to see you back again. I mean if you're on every week...one week last year I was on I think five times a week in different things, re-runs of films and plays and things.

[in 1974] Where I am at the moment I know that I could be - if I wished to be - a top-ranking star because I have the power and the technique, I think, to take on anyone and the only thing that has stopped me from being a top-ranking star is my desire to be - which I've never wanted. It's only recently have I achieved the weight to if I want to be. I mean I could go to Stratford and play Prospero, I could have taken a television series and built myself up and done all sorts of things but I don't. I like an anonymity and I like sort of in a sense being an amateur.

I love my freedom and I hate the demands that are made on you. I mean the number of jobs actually that I've turned down is incredible. If I took them all and pushed and was seen in the right places and did all that nonsense, I suppose one could become a top-ranking star. I think the price is too high, quite honestly.

I'm often given parts that aren't as big as they are colorful, but people remember them. When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like 'Hamlet'.

I like actors - such as Margaret Rutherford and Peter Lorre - who aren't afraid to over-act like real people. When I take a job I can always come up with ten different ways of doing the part. But I'll always choose the flashiest one. You've got to dress the window a bit.