I might have got somewhere with 'The Ladykillers,' but forty minutes were cut. A lot of me was cut with that forty minutes.

I didn't always mean to be an actor. I was carried onto the stage when I was two days old, but I never acted as a child. My parents were stage people.

Dad was convinced always that I was going to be a road sweeper.

Sometimes I felt glad not to be too close to people. I might have been happier, I suppose. On the other hand, I never had much luck with people over the years.

I've had three marriages end in disaster. Lynne knew the score when she married me. It was always just a matter of time before she became the fourth ex-Mrs. Peter Sellers.

My mum very much wanted me to go into the theatre.

When I am searching for a character, I leave myself open, as does a medium. And I think that sometimes you can be inhabited by the spirit of someone who lived at some time or who was a bit like the person you are doing. And maybe they come in and use you as a chance to relive again.

My ambition in the cinema, since I came across it, was to play Chance... I have realized that ambition, and so I have no more.

I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up - a crashing sentimentalist who alternates between great heights and black depths.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.