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The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to start thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a character trait than height. It is just a physical fact, and that's all there is to it.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

I like the idea of bringing cartoon characters to life... and although the Americans have already attempted this, their culture is not sufficiently humane to make it work.

The American women are very pretty and have great simplicity of character, and the extreme neatness of their appearance is truly delightful: cleanliness is everywhere even more studiously attended to here than in England.

In America, there's a programme called 'The Swan.' They take 12 ugly people and call them 'ugly ducklings.' They spend six months and have everything done - plastic surgery, teeth, everything. And then they have this moment where their family is brought in, and they are revealed. It's scary.

'You're Ugly Too' isn't a comedy, but it has a lightness of touch with a hard edge. But it's essentially a warm story tinged with a bit of melancholy in the great Irish tradition. I'm very proud of that film.

I don't think there's any independent cartoonist whose stuff I don't like or respect in at least some way or another. We're all marginal laborers - we're practically medical oddities - so I don't see why we can't all be nice to each other.

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.