My strengths?  I think I have discipline.  I think I have commitment to what I do.  I try to serve the play.  I don't let my ego, my self conceit, get in the way of the truth of the play.  I don't try to project me, the actor, I try to project the person and the play.  The playwright, I think, is the most important person. So a search for truth, I think, is a strength, a lack of - or a denial of -demonstrated, kind of show-off conceit.

Sir Derek Jacobi, 1990    

I would go out of my way to see - oh, so many - from Sir John, Sir Alec, through Scofield to Finney, through Richardson to McKellan.  Vanessa, Maggie, Judi, Glenda.  They're all worth the price of a ticket.  There's a very, very rich crop.  With Sir Laurence, he was kind of preeminent. He was extraordinary.  I mean, his like doesn't come that often.  And he was pre-eminent as a man of the theatre, a man of our business.  So the journalists - the hacks -  desperately want a replacement.  There's not a new Olivier;  there can't be one....It makes good copy in the papers.  Nice headline, nice little paragraph.  But it's not true, it's rubbish.  We've got too many who are wonderful that you can't pick one out. 

Sir Derek Jacobi, 1990 

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