From The Heart

I think I probably look more aggressive than I actually am - because of my big Roman nose. I always wanted to look different, but then we all do.
I have never had a problem with being unpleasant on screen. A lot of actors want to be loved on screen, so they have reservations about those roles. But I never think of the complicated men I play as being bad. I thought the guy in The Politician's Wife was all right.
Being more clothed in my roles these days is not my own choice. Being naked os am area I'm happy to go into, but when you get to 50, they don't think of you for naked roles.
Acting is ruthless and lots of people in the business don't work, but that's the same in other industries now. It's less out of synch with other professions than it used to be.
I originally wanted to be a cricketer, but I wasn't good enough to do it professionally. maybe that physical dexterity has stood me in good stead as an actor.
I was closer to my mother than my father, who was a good man but from a different era. He was 50 when I was born.
My mother was a major force in my life; you couldn't afford to be sexist with her around. She was artistic, a pianist whose career was cut short when she fell over while holding a glass and permanently damaged the fourh dinger of her right hand.
I left home at eight and never went back apart from holidays. it was the thing to do then (in the 1950s), to send your kids to boarding school. I would never do the same to my own children; having had them, why would I want to send them away?
I love the company of women because I spent ten years at a boy's school.
We were caned, oh God, yes, all the time. I don't believe in corporal punishment, you've just got to be loving parents to bring your children up in the world.
As a family, we always have a meal together at 7.30 in the evening. I do that because I remember the evenings at boarding school with no one to talk to.
I was suspended from school for hetrosexual activity; if it had been homosexual activity, I think I would have been all right. Me and a chum would escape at night to meet the Liverpudlian lasses who worked in the school's kitchen. I think Liverpool girls are tremendous, which is why I married one.
Franco Zeffirelli warned me off Sharon and told me not to mess around with her because she was a good Catholic girl. He was directing us in a play in 1977; that's how we met. But I thought she was too gorgeous to notice me.
Sharon and I have similar backgrounds and sensibilities: she's the daughter of a merchant seaman and my mother was the daughter of a Welsh miner.
The secret of a long marriage (they have been married for 25 years) is that you can't take any of it for granted. We still go away for weekends together.
last year my son Jack, who is now 19, and I stayed with the warrior Kayapo tribe to raise awareness for the charity Amazon Coop. We went to help draw attention to the Brazilian government's development strategy for the Amazon rainforest, which could lead to over 230,000 square kilometres of rainforest being cleared.
For Jack, it was a coming of age and he was astonishing. He climbed trees and became a major fisherman: without him we wouldn't have had enough to eat.
I went aling all gung-ho, but I was very naive; jaguars and anacondas were our main problem. And they didn't tell us about the big spiders that leap at you, the piranhas, and the bugs that dig into your skin and come out four weeks later when you're home.
I can't quite believe I'm 54. I feel between about 21 and 35, and sometimes younger than that. When I was a kid, 54 meant pipe and slippers - but I'm a long way off that.