My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.
You have to be selfish to be an actor.
I am made Hand of the King which gives me an enormous amount of power, which I use quite ruthlessly - but skilfully - and Dame Diana Rigg joins us [playing political mastermind the Queen of Thorns] and we have a couple of really good sparring moments.
On an independent film you're lucky if you get one, but ostensibly the job is the same. There's very little difference, apart from the knowledge that there's a captive audience at the end of it - which you can't always guarantee with a movie.
I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look. . . I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.
It's a question of keeping one's eyes and ears open and watching how other people play the game. They're watching me too, to see what my attitude is like.
I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.
Tis the gift to be gentle, ’tis the gift to be fair, ’Tis the gift to wake and breathe the morning air, To walk every day in the path that we choose, Is the gift that we pray we will never never lose.
When someone says you can't do what you know you can do, then you can't do anything
To pace about, looking to obtain status, looking to attain 'importance' - I can think of nothing more ridiculous.
For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good.