They’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people.
The biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age.
Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It’s harder.
Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.
As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.
I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.
In cinema, the leading player is the director.
You don’t go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that’s benign conquest. It’s a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.
You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.
I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it’s such an extraordinary part of our lives.
There are some directors, lesser in confidence or skill, who make the actor feel very uncomfortable because you feel you’re auditioning for them, every day, and that’s a terrible feeling on the set.
Sometimes it’s right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.
Family is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don’t have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody.
When I choose a role it’s either because I recognise the man, or that I’m very curious to know him. If I neither recognise nor know him, then it is better that I don’t play him.
If it’s a really well written villain, he probably has more layers than the archetypal good person. So that would be very attractive to an actor. No one chooses to be a villain; it’s usually a reaction to something else.
I just loved playing a man who was unafraid of making an idiot of himself in the process of falling in love. I found that admirable.
There is so much to do on a film set. It is an extraordinarily invigorating and wonderful place to be, when things are running well.
If your best friend has stolen your girlfriend, it does become life and death.
Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn’t there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can’t.
I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I’m waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.