My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

I'm old enough to have friends and contemporaries who have long since retired, and that's their prerogative - enough is enough; it doesn't mean a thing to me. But I haven't got any money, so, you know, I just keep on working.

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief.

The main lesson I learned from 2015 is that a World Cup doesn't define a player's career.

In terms of the past, I think we've all learned from the past. I think that's great wisdom.

I say to people that it's a choice that we make every day in our lives. Doesn't matter what you're going through. You don't have to be going through what I went through. But it's whether you decide to get up or stay down, whether you say 'yes' or whether you say 'no' to life. Basically, I decided to say, 'Yes.'