My personal problem is that I take the business of film-making so seriously that I find it very difficult to relax..

I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy..

I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play..

One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks Englis….

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a charac….

I mean I can do it when I'm very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing..

I'm not looking for anything other than an interesting role to play..

Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression..

The one thing I would never wish it to be thought is that you play serious roles in order to achieve some sort of respectability which you can't if y….

The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or al….

It was the challenge of that that I found daunting, but also engaging and interesting [to play Maigret]..

At the moment, I'm certainly not thinking 'never again', but neither am I thinking 'I can't wait to play that part again'. I'm somewhere in between..

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s..

I'm as poor as a church mouse, that's just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese..

I've read about eight or ten of the original novels, and one of them is where Maigret's in bed for the entire story! His wife is running around and s….

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual ….

[Georges] Simenon could be very brave like that. You never quite know what you're going to get or how the story's going to be told..

I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time..

I would never be a television presenter. It's not something I could ever do..

To Be Successful You Don't Need Beautiful Face And Heroic Body, What You Need is Skillful Mind And Ability To Perform.

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge ….