It's such a thrill to be here with you, such an amazing community of filmmakers and film artists here. And of course I'd like to thank the Empire readers who clearly never heard that my acting teacher told me I'd never get anywhere let alone get a career achievement award. Acting students take note. And Empire magazine is a great magazine for people who love movies and love to make movies. As Quentin Tarantino said: 'It's not just your suck-up movie magazine but even if it were, I can work with that!

But this means so much to me because I've had the great good fortune of working in your country quite often with so many extraordinary artists and crack technical crews. I remember my first experience with Alien, I was working with a fabulous crew. It was the very end of that picture and I was in that great white spacesuit floating 40 feet up in the air on a wire with my crossbow thing - I'm not very technical about weapons. Anyway they were having this huge discussion 40 feet below about whether the alien looks like it's being incinerated or not. They went on and on and so I started to swing around and the next time I looked down they had gone - gone to lunch! They came back about an hour later and were profusely apologetic and actually the special effects crew started to syphon up rum mixed with tea. But it's always a great honour to work in your country! But it's my greatest wish to come back soon and work with you all again. And I can't thank you enough for having me here tonight. It's a great honour and I'll never forget it. Thank-you."
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