Sharpe is my favorite role of all that I've played. He's a very complex character. He knows that he's a good soldier, but he will always have to fight the prejudice of aristocratic officers because of his rough working-class upbringing. On the battlefield, he's full of confidence - but off it, he is unsure, a bit shy and ill at ease.
At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.
I put quite a few trees in last autumn. A lot of silver birch and a couple of native trees - just generally doing gardening, putting plants in and hedges in. It takes quite a lot of time and I love it.
Working in a garden calms me down.
Jimmy McGovern - I love his writing, and I'm a big fan of him and Alan Clarke.
The thought of being in space, and kind of enclosed, I find would be very claustrophobic. I think I would panic in that situation.
I think Daniel Craig is brilliant as Bond. I remember at the beginning, they were all saying, 'Oh, he won't work,' and I thought, 'Yeah, you watch.'
Of course I believe in love despite four divorces. There is nobody who doesn't believe in love. But marriage - that fits some people but obviously not me.
When I was younger, I used to watch all the black-and-white 'Dracula's and 'Frankenstein's.
When I first started shooting 'Sharpe,' back in the early 1990s, I'd kiss my two elder daughters goodbye at the end of August - Evie wasn't even born then - and I wouldn't see them again until Christmas. That was tough. They were hard times.
A common misperception of me is... that I am a tough, rough northerner, which I suppose I am really. But I'm pretty mild-mannered most of the time. It's the parts that you play I guess. I don't mind it. I'm not a tough guy. I'd like to act as a fair, easy-going, kind man at some point.
I'd like to act as a fair, easy-going, kind man at some point.
I've been accused of being a bit too keen on my football, not least by my three ex-wives.
I saw 'The Exorcist' at the cinema when I was quite young, maybe 14. When I went back home, my mum and dad weren't in, so I had to wait for them on the main road. I were too scared to enter the house.
I left school when I was 16; then I worked for my father, who was a welder. And I was a welder for three years, you know, welder of fabrication, metal 'cause it was a big industrial town, Sheffield. It was much steel and coal and stuff like that.
I'm still Sean that me mates went to school with, not Sean the film star. And that's the way I prefer to be.
I don't like broad swords. They're not much fun. A broad sword is just a big chunk of steel, and there's not much finesse in it, not much skill, I don't think anyway.
Actors like Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, they totally immerse themselves in their parts.
Obviously I'm delighted I'm a grandfather, but I guess it takes a little while to digest. You start thinking, 'Oh, I'm half-way over the natural life span. So this is the last bit, and I'd better enjoy it.'
I did a film called 'Patriot Games' with Harrison Ford, and we actually shot three different versions of my death. And they settled on the third.
