I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.
I'm like a mechanic. If you break down and phone the AA, they'll come to you whether it's raining or snowing. That's what an actor should do.
There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.
As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.
