Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It’s...

I come from a class which used to be called the gentry – which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.

I think Americans are wonderful film actors – the best in the world – but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.

If there’s one thing I don’t look for in a maid, it’s discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.

My mother converted to Catholicism to marry my father.

When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it’s hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.

There are some men who are frightened by strong women and some men who are nurtured by them and feel nervous, with weak clinging vines. And I am very much of the latter category.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is – and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as...

What you have to understand about period drama is that it’s ‘history light.’

Nor should they be, but everyone needs to feel they’re part of something worthwhile. That, in the last analysis, their life has some meaning in a larger context. The questions is what am I part...

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don’t agree.

Ninety-eight per cent of actors who actually make a living do so in front of a camera.

Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are...

There isn’t much point in the whole ‘celebrity’ nonsense unless one is prepared to go out on a limb and, one hopes, speak up for some under-represented section of the community.

To be honest, when you’re running a series and you have an open end, you don’t want to limit yourself too much with the choices you’ve got for a particular character.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn’t all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

You do get fond of your characters. Handing them on is like giving a child to a nanny.

I always like to arrive at the airport early to enjoy breakfast and lounge about so that when I get on the plane all my travel fever has disappeared.

Nothing is harder to dramatize than happiness.

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman — Tell us about the film you’re going to make.Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It’s called “Charlie Chan In London”. It’s a detective story.Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?Morris Weissman: Well, not...

I don’t think I’m an unkind person, I don’t think my books are unkind, and I don’t think my readers are unkind.

What the Americans want to see is life in their drama. Life of all sorts: hard lives, easy lives, or lives which, like most of ours, are a mixture of the two.

Plenty of friendships are sustainable through dinners and lunches, but will not stand a week away. So be careful with whom you go on holiday.

I always loved movies and the cinema; we always used to go to see films as a family.

The business of life is learning that you can’t lay down the terms.

Of course I love winning things; I can’t tell you how much I enjoy it.

Very few Englishmen ever ask a woman anything about themselves. They choose instead to lecture their dinner neighbors on a new and better route to the M5, or to praise their own professional achievements. So...

You see, in America, it’s quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an...

I don’t seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next,...

Success means your thoughts are worthy of everyone’s consideration.

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don’t we?

I love ‘Sex and the City;’ I think I’ve seen every episode.

One of the things that you’re not really in control of – apart from everything – is your smell.

Especially as I was an old friend, or at least I was a person she had known for a long time, which after a certain point is almost the same thing…

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.

I like people who don’t accept boundaries. Like Florence Nightingale. And Napoleon or Louis XIV, though I’m not sure how much I’d have liked to meet them. I admire people who aren’t circumscribed by circumstance.

What I dislike about movie culture is that it often presents a parable of our problems – but the issues are all straightforward and the people are either nice or they’re not. In real life,...

I just don’t believe in generalisations.

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people’s lives and what information these details give.

The ’20s are a very interesting period to me.

It is a truism but it is still true that the longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially.

I have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.

I think America has dealt with – I mean, this is simplistic, and of course I don’t live in America – but the impression I get is that there is not a kind of obligation...

I envy people who can think, ‘No, I’m not going to work today’ when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.

I think every period – except for the 14th century, or something – has some merits.

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.

Bought marmalade? Oh dear, I call that very feeble.