We often find far more power in a symbol than in something that is an an actuality.
A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator.
Writing is an antidote for loneliness.
Los Angeles is a weird mixture of every influence that Europe has dropped in its melting pot. It is hot, arid, picturesque, seething, banal, sometimes plain pleasant, and sometimes awesome.
I hardly ever see new plays. They don't have the audacity and daring that they used to.
I liked Stanley Kubrick from the start. He had a warm, benign nature and offered himself to you as a friend and ally. He seemed to possess no airs or attitudes, neuroses, or predilection towards tantrums.
During the Second World War, we lived in a flat on Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. At one point during the blitz, the air-raid sirens went off every night for 30 nights, and each time, my parents would grab my sister and me and take us to the shelter beneath Whitechapel underground station.
If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.
You are treated like a cog in a machine. The director might be obsessing so much with the stunts that he doesn't notice your performance, and the producer may just be an insane money man, but I have no snobbery about the movies.
British culture loves the image of itself in the mirror; it doesn't want to look deep inside, behind the eyes, inside the brain, inside where those shivers and nightmares lie.
There's a lot of talk about people being abused on Twitter, women being savagely insulted and degraded. I think, 'Why get into that in the first place?' If I jump into a garbage bin, I can't complain that I've got rubbish all over me.
I do a devilish borscht, and I'm very good at pickles. I used to make jars and jars of sweet-and-sour pickled cucumbers.
When I ascended from the depths of the working class to the middle class, the higher I got, the more dishonesty I found.
When I have criticism that I feel is unfair, the rejection does disturb me, but it also strengthens me. I used to get turned down for all sorts of jobs. I used to writhe in pain, but then I would say, 'Good. Good. I will get stronger for this.'
I have a daughter from a relationship I had in my late teens or early 20s. Because I felt it wasn't the kind of pukka behaviour my family or relatives would admit to, I denied it for many years.
When I started studying acting, I was enamoured of actors who used movement to enhance the language.
A lot of praise is given to very mediocre work. Critics have lost their taste, hearing, and eyesight.
Facebook and Twitter are like a horrible digital plague.
My first name used to be Leslie. I snipped that off and put my middle name, which was Steven, in the front.
Most American films have now become mindless. The human element has been removed, so you are just left with the surrogate human, which is the robot, so coincidentally or, rather, ironically, they are making films about robots, without realising they are talking about themselves.
