I’m not a collector. I don’t like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate.

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don’t really need to explain very much at all – you just say he’s a spy and he’s a little bit theatrical and overblown and smug and...

Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That’s a platform we use, or a priest. You know, anywhere you lecture and pontificate to people.

I, on the other hand, am a fully-rounded human being, with a degree from the University of Life, a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks, and three gold stars from the Kindergarten of Getting...

I have always regarded Mr. Bean as a timeless, ageless character, and I would rather he be remembered as a character mostly in his 30s and 40s.

I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the ’50s and ’60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother’s Morris Minor. I drove it around...

Not so much in Canada, but certainly in the US, as I’m sure you know, money is all, and if they can get another 26 programs of the same thing even though it advances the...

People think because I can make them laugh on the stage, I’ll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn’t the case at all. I am essentially a rather quiet, dull person who...

Quite a nasty piece of work. Not the sort of person you’d want to have dinner with.

It’s a bit disconcerting being treated like Madonna.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be...

And, we put a lot more value, or at least I personally put a lot more value, on the creative values and creative challenges of something than the commercial necessities.

When I was doing Bean more than I’ve done him in the last few years, I did strange things – like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.

I loved the show as a child and felt I could not do it justice.

To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas – even if...

It’s not easy to take a sit-com and turn it into a feature.

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as...

I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It’s not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.

Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You’ve got to be careful.

And that sort of reinforces to me that fact that he causes so much trouble, and never really pays a price for it, which I think he should.

I love walking in the rain because no one can see me crying

I feel as though the camera is almost a kind of voyeur in Mr. Bean’s life, and you just watch this bizarre man going about his life in the way that he wants to.

Marketing is what gets you noticed, and that side of it something – this side of it, if you like, doing interviews – is the side of it that I least enjoy, and yet is...

I would return to the Blackadder character if the opportunity came up. I have no qualms about that at all.

I have to say that I’ve always believed perfectionism is more of a disease than a quality. I do try to go with the flow but I can’t let go.

I think I am a creative person, but I’m slightly more kind of visionary… I prefer to guide writers, than to claim to be one of them.

As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that...

Confronting a stadium audience, you can’t see the whites of their eyes. It’s just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can’t see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree...

I mean I can do it when I’m very relaxed, and with good friends, then I think I can be amusing.

Mr. Bean is essentially a child trapped in the body of a man. All cultures identify with children in a similar way, so he has this bizarre global outreach.

Funny things tend not to happen to me. I am not a natural comic. I need to think about things a lot before I can be even remotely amusing.

I’m not really a writer, so my main problem always is finding the writing talent to write something of the caliber that you would like to do.

I think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I’m not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And...

It’s the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression.

I don’t much enjoy Back and Forth. I mean, I think it has its own particular qualities, but I think it’s inferior to any of the half-hour ones we did.

I’m more critical of the films I make than anyone else.

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance… has helped to determine your path through life.

Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches,...

I have always worried about things more than I should.

I think the character does tend to suit an episodic thing, because what’s fun about him is that he doesn’t care about anyone else, and it’s very difficult for a main character – a lead...

And what’s interesting about him as a comic character is that the custard pie hardly ever ends up on his face.

Nope, I don’t enjoy work generally. Not because I’m lazy; it’s just all so stressful and worrying.

There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you’re bound to understand and like everything...

But generally speaking, I tend to be quiet and introspective.

We still have a tradition certainly in English television; it’s faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature...

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

You’re about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking contest.

I’m very good at having time off. I tend to take whole years off – I had 1994 and 1997 off. I find it very easy; I just love pottering around doing normal things.

No, no, I was only funny on stage, really. I, I, think I was funny as a person toward my classmates when I was very young. You know, when I was a child, up to...