In Shakespeare's day it was women who were being burned at the stake as witches... not men. The men were thought of as alchemists. But women doing the same thing would be a witch and would be burned.

Women have got to stop being polite. If I ever had children, which I don't, the first thing I'd teach a girl of mine is the words 'f - off.'

Being powerful is so much more interesting than being beautiful.

You write your life story by the choices you make.

It has nothing to do with clothing or makeup. Just put your shoulders back and chin up, and face the world with pride.

Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be.

When you're 16, 30 seems ancient. When you're 30, 45 seems ancient. When you're 45, 60 seems ancient. When you're 60, nothing seems ancient.

I don't think it's good to try and change anyone. The trick and the mystery - of relationships and life in general - is to learn to live with the bits you don't like.

Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?'

I don't like the word 'strong,' because a strong character is never an interesting character. A character is made interesting by their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses.

Where you grew up becomes a big part of who you are for the rest of your life. You can't run away from that. Well, sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are.

I had possessed her - and she never knew it.

Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind.

I don't like being successful; the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.

In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty.

A mistake is just a temporary pause in your plan.

God didn't have time to create a nobody.

Holy scripture does not hold women back. It's the people that decide to interpret it in such a way for their own, sometimes political, agendas.

Anyone that knows me knows what I'm about, and I'm very much a British actor, a European actor.

Trees cause pollution.

Taking the lead, that was the hard part. To concede after that was a massive disappointment - not good enough.