When you play a serious role, as far as I'm concerned, I feel I'm using exactly the same skills, whatever they are, to play the role as you do with s….

I would never wish to say that I've finally waved goodbye to any character, it's just that the emphasis tends to shift..

The character [Maigret] is bound to change and develop, and I wouldn't like to claim that we are perfectly formed straight out of the box. I think it….

A law which attempts to say you can criticise and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed..

[Maigret] is more internal. I think if we made more of these I might let him out a bit..

I like to relish words and sentences, and phraseology, and there's not much facility for that [playing Maigret]..

I love both [Johnny English and James Bond] actually. The action sequences are really exciting because you're getting to work with some brilliant cre….

Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You've ….

Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the allege….

[Maigret] is terribly self-contained, not that I would ever wish him to be any more comic, particularly, but in the second film we've made you see he….

The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other ….

I'm sure that a French production of this [Maigret series] would be different. For better or worse, who's to say, but probably not very good for 8 o'….

What directors of television drama constantly tell you is 'Don't act it. Don't try. Don't emphasise that word'. Whereas with someone like Blackadder,….

I'm not a collector. I don't like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate..

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job..

Lord, thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer..

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don't really need to explain very much at all - you just say he's a spy and he's a little bit theatrical….

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, i….

I'm more critical of the films I make than anyone else..

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing..

I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It's not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties..