Steven Berkoff

When I have criticism that I feel is unfair, the rejection does disturb me, but it also strengthens me. I used to get turned down for all sorts of jobs. I used to writhe in pain, but then I would say, 'Good. Good. I will get stronger for this.'

I have a daughter from a relationship I had in my late teens or early 20s. Because I felt it wasn't the kind of pukka behaviour my family or relatives would admit to, I denied it for many years.

As a child, you only think of the now.

That is the nature of the British psyche. It's very blunt, plain, very linear. It's pragmatic: it records life as it is.

With the feminist movement - a good movement which I support - there's been more overt criticism of the male, an attitude that men are failing to understand the finer nature of women, failing to appreciate their needs, failing to support them, failing to be compassionate.

I liked Stanley Kubrick from the start. He had a warm, benign nature and offered himself to you as a friend and ally. He seemed to possess no airs or attitudes, neuroses, or predilection towards tantrums.

Most American films have now become mindless. The human element has been removed, so you are just left with the surrogate human, which is the robot, so coincidentally or, rather, ironically, they are making films about robots, without realising they are talking about themselves.

Anti-Semitism has never gone away; it will always be there because it's a very convenient prejudice. The gene of it, the original DNA, is buried deep within our history. And even within some Jews as well.

My mother was almost entirely responsible for my cultural education. She took me to the library once a week, and by the age of seven, I was reading 100 books a year.

Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.

During the Second World War, we lived in a flat on Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. At one point during the blitz, the air-raid sirens went off every night for 30 nights, and each time, my parents would grab my sister and me and take us to the shelter beneath Whitechapel underground station.

I've played a lot of bad guys in my time, especially in movies. It's delightful playing the villain. It's almost the most interesting and most complicated role in a film.