Steven Berkoff

“A knighthood would be a bit too much. An OBE or an MBE or whatever they are called, one of those would be more elegant.”

“When I started studying acting, I was enamoured of actors who used movement to enhance the language.”

“During the Second World War, we lived in a flat on Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. At one point during the blitz, the air-raid sirens went off every night for 30 nights, and each time, my parents would grab my sister and me and take us to the shelter beneath Whitechapel underground station.”

“Art is a way of penetrating and going deep into our unconscious and creating amazing worlds - as the Greeks did, if you like, as did Ovid with his stories and his fantasies.”

“When I was young, I was shy.”

“If you put out garbage, you turn people into garbage.”

“I find it very satisfying to write because you can purge many things and vent what you feel under the mask of fiction.”

“The mainstream is generally garbage. Look at the heavily subsidized theaters.”

“British culture loves the image of itself in the mirror; it doesn't want to look deep inside, behind the eyes, inside the brain, inside where those shivers and nightmares lie.”

“As a child, you only think of the now.”

“I like a lot of international people. Julie Taymore, the American director - she's one of the most exciting directors I've seen.”