Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

My fear with 'Lear' was that I would not have the physical or vocal strength. But this play, it's all in your head. That was one of the really interesting things when we were rehearsing it: We were all exhausted because it was all up here.

My life was transformed by the Labour government of 1945. It was transformative for millions of people like me, you know - education, the health service. It was proof that politics can make life better for people; that a social dream can become a social reality by the power of government.

I studiously avoid any academic dissections of the play and any kind of previous experience of playing. For me, it's all in the play.

It would be nice if education was free to everyone who wanted it, but that's not the world we live in.

The best theater is trying to tell the truth, and the best politics is trying to tell the truth.

Men can be a great deal of work for very little reward.

What interested me, was that as we age, those seemingly unbreakable barriers that define us, our gender, they begin to crack, to blur; they're not absolutes anymore.

The best teacher is an audience. The ideal performance is when that group of strangers sitting in the dark gets energy from the group in the light and sends energy back to us. When it really works, a perfect circle is formed.

Anything I could have done that was legal to get Margaret Thatcher's government out I was prepared to do. I could not believe what she was doing to this country.

Anything I could have done that was legal to get Margaret Thatcher's government out I was prepared to do. I could not believe what she was doing to this country.

Rock Hudson. He was an absolute human being. Charming, funny, real.

No, I didn't think of myself as an idealist. I consider myself as a believer in what I regard as the Labour Party's basic principles, which have to do with equality and 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. You know, the golden rules.