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I don't generally believe in people being knighted.

I don't think there is a guy that played more gay characters than I have done in my life.

All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.

I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights.

To be knighted, that would be amazing. I remember Alex Ferguson from Man Utd got it and Steve Redgrave - to be in the same category as them is amazing.

Gay actors have been playing straight since Euripides.

And much more am I sorrier for my good knights' loss than for the loss of my fair queen; for queens I might have enough, but such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in no company.

People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.

There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company.

In big battle scenes, like 'King Arthur', you see the knights in all their fine armour, but they're not in the thick of it: follow the perspective, and you'll find some poor little sod, who didn't want to be there, anyway, with his head split.