Quotes

[in 2008] Actors now think that if they raise their voice, they are being "unrealistic". I tell them, "What you do is unreal. You're wearing someone else's clothes and speaking someone else's words".

I've worked with practically all the great directors, alphabetically, from Bergman [Ingmar Bergman] to Zeffirelli [Franco Zeffirelli]. It's wonderful to be involved in the mystery of other directors' work, because they're all different. But most will know within the first three or four days whether it's going to work. The interesting thing is when it's wrong they have to go on and they can't tell anybody it's wrong.

I love the politics of committees. I love the fact that with any committee if they set out on a certain path there is always a moment in the discussion if you pick the right moment and you have the right case where you can completely reverse their decision. I mean it's a very undemocratic procedure.

The theatre is always dying, always has been, because it's always changing. Change looks like imminent death sometimes. But it won't ever go away because it's live and there's nothing that you can compare it to because of that.

To play [Alan] Ayckbourn properly, you have to dig deep, be serious and then get laughed at. It wounds the personality

[after seeing the 'revised' television version of his film Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), which was not only heavily cut, but also featured 20 minutes of extra scenes filmed in Hollywood by a different director and crew, with new actors]: Universal shipped me a copy and asked for my response. I asked to have my name removed, and the title changed. I also have to report that I was bored.

[on Harold Pinter] His characters are never and they are not absurd. The idea that he belongs to something called "The Theatre of the Absurd" is preposterous. All his characters have the most accurate behavioral patterns. But you have to fill the pauses.