It’s a funny thing – the reality is I have no feelings about school. It’s long gone. Funnily enough, the bad memories – of which I don’t have any left to be honest, I can just remember a sense of tedium – have faded. And teachers that I liked have remained quite vivid. There are three or four left.
Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.
I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.
People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It’s not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.
I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell’s a bit more than a comedian.
When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week’s wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam’s fair trade campaign helps right this wrong.
My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.
I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it’s a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.
We’ve always been involved with America – I have a son who lives there and it’s a big part of my life.
I never saw myself as Mr. Ugly, but I’m not that handsome. I can sort of be made to look quite a lot better or quite a lot worse.
I thought I was managing my expectations, but on hearing the news I discovered new and unfamiliar vocal tones. Perhaps I should do another musical.
I don’t think it’s aiming at gags, I think the humour is woven into it. It’s part of how the characters operate and how they deal with disaster because they’re worldly enough to have a bit of irony and wryness about their own circumstances. So, I think the humour comes out of that.
To be bothered wherever you go – it’s not a rational thing to want at all.
I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better – or a lot worse.
One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age – at the age of 38 in fact – he changed course and decided to become a doctor.
I don’t know if this qualifies as gentle reassurance, but right now this is all that stands between me and a Harley-Davidson.
The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn’t know well.
I do notice that when I’ve been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.
As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I’m not greedy for that stuff.
Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.