Steven Berkoff

If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.

There's a lot of talk about people being abused on Twitter, women being savagely insulted and degraded. I think, 'Why get into that in the first place?' If I jump into a garbage bin, I can't complain that I've got rubbish all over me.

After watching my poor mother being sometimes neglected by my father, it was almost tattooed on my brain that I would never cause hardship or despair to a partner.

It's impossible to have a favourite Shakespeare, since so many of the plays rouse and inspire completely different parts of your being.

My earliest memory is of my first day at primary school and the distress of seeing my mother part from me.And being in a room full of strangers - of aliens. I felt that I would never see her again.

When I was young, I was shy.

I enjoy being in movies, but my heart will always lie with the theatre.

I'd like to be remembered with affection, with regard, and with just a smallest amount of admiration - that here's a man who walked against the tide.

The most vital part of your humanity is the love you have for others. To deny it is to deny your life.

Los Angeles is a weird mixture of every influence that Europe has dropped in its melting pot. It is hot, arid, picturesque, seething, banal, sometimes plain pleasant, and sometimes awesome.

British culture loves the image of itself in the mirror; it doesn't want to look deep inside, behind the eyes, inside the brain, inside where those shivers and nightmares lie.

In London, nobody comments on what you wear - they think that's not important to you or your state of well-being.