How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.

'The Naked Civil Servant' was as important for me as 'Easy Rider' was for Jack Nicholson. No question.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

If you'll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn't experience 'the sixties' until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties--or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.

Things come in a quieter way to me. It's not laziness, and it's not diffidence. I just know how far you have to bend for work. That's important for me.

In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent...