Quotes

It's all about cutting your teeth. I would hate to be thrust into the middle of a big film and not deliver. There's young actors and they're put into these central roles and they're commanding armies - but they can't quite pull it off. I'd much rather do it in small steps and build it from there. But at least now, for me, when they're casting movies in America, the big question is, "Can he do an American accent?" Well, that's answered now. He can do one, he can do a Thirties New Yorker.

Actors are all different, we've all got different motors.

[on Tyrannosaur (2011)] People put on different masks. They put on a different face to the world in order to cope. It's a strange manipulation. They are out there and they are ignored because the circumstances that created them are ignored.

We have to accept the hurt and the misery as real. It's all around us, and you can be watching the evening news one night, telling you about a lady who was beaten to death, and then they try to cheer you up at the end with the shot of a dog on a surfboard. I find this offensive.

I worry. I worry we're losing our humanity. That's why I feel a need to explore these people. There has to be some sort of redemption, some resolution. I have to believe that. Otherwise life is just a series of bad events.

[on Rocky (1976)] We have a story of an underdog told in a cinematic way. People see this movie now and they think he wins because his personal victory is so large. But you have to remember that in that first 'Rocky', Rocky lost. And that's why I love it. It's a movie about a loser, but one who is redeemed all the same.

[about why he switched from acting to directing] I was just fed up with the low-budget British film - getting a hand-held camera, swinging it around, improvising..That whole technique got bastardized to death. I'm sick of seeing it. I wanted to make a movie.

I talked to kids that had come out of acting schools and they would say to me that they learned nothing, and then I'd watch them doing their stuff and go: "No, I don't believe you, I believe that there is something that you did learn." It's quite rock'n'roll to say "I went to college and didn't learn anything" but they had some experience that I didn't have.

It is a craft. We laugh at actors but it is a craft.

I just started working with a guy called Martin Ledwith who's an acting coach and we just started breaking it down and looking at why I thought some parts of my performances didn't work and then we looked at other great performances by other actors and just started to build it up from there.