I had to act in a school play when I was about ten years old. I really didn't want to do it. But everyone had to do it so I didn't have a choice. A talent agent came and watched it and later gave me some work. It's funny because I'd always known that I wanted a movie career. I just didn't think that I would be in the movies.

Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry are two of the hottest girls in the world - and so normal and funny with it. If I was a few years older they are the kind of girls I'd like to date. I want a younger version of Cheryl and Katy - a mixture of the two would be hot.

Comediennes are the lucky ones because if you're funny you can be 125 years old and they will still accept you.

But you can't focus on things that matter if all you've been is asleep for forty years. Funny how sleep rhymes with sheep. You know.

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.

I loved my 17 years with R.E.M. but I'm ready to reflect assess and move on to a different phase of my life. The four of us will continue our close friendship and I look forward to hearing their future efforts as the world's biggest R.E.M. fan.

When Ted Williams was here inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago he said he must have earned it because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way I'm proud to be in this company that way.

In those early years in New York when I was a stranger in a big city it was the companionship and later friendship which I was offered in the Linnean Society that was the most important thing in my life.

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship and then the friendship of two Venetians Roberta and Franco who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.