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When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film abroad.

I had no aspirations to be part of American cinema... I was really a Europe-based person, and those were the films I was inspired by.

I spent a couple of years doing American films. I did a few.

I was offered Fagin-type roles, but I wanted to do new things. I could have worked in America, but there was a recession in the British film industry, and I wanted to work in England. I've no regrets.

A well known director wouldn't take the chance on casting me for an American role after he discovered that I was English. Some time later, he expressed his regret that he hadn't taken the chance with me.

The truth is that I've always wanted to be an actor, ever since I was a child. I used to see these English movies which were shown to us in our school every Saturday, and then I used to enact the hero's part in my head.

So I built my entire career in the United States and that's why it feels like I'm an American actor.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films.

I say I'm the best actor in America who's never done a movie.

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies.