The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I’m not denying they exist. But it’s a far more philistine country than people think.
But this is where you get all the market research and things get in danger of becoming formulaic, and where you depend on brands and getting recognised actors. It’s the thing that precludes risk very often, otherwise everyone would be avant-garde all over the place.
On his fight scene with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones: It was a delicious experience.
I’m just the last English twit, really.
My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I’ve sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there’s no virtue in that; it’s the way one is raised.
It’s entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don’t say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them.
Maybe it’s shallow of me to have a wife that’s so beautiful, but it makes things easier. To me she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
I think it’s quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I’m Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.
I haven’t had to struggle very much. I haven’t paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.
It’s whether they have a vision and whether they’re able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it – they don’t even have to know much about camera or acting.
Hollywood hasn’t aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.
I’ll be your friend so long as you’re not crap.
You have to be ill if you want to get better.
Looking in the mirror, staring back at me isn’t so much a face as the expression of a predicament.
It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn’t do anything to match up to your wife.
I love you even when you’re sick and look disgusting.
I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I’m still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.
I do think I’m a character actor.
It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there’s usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.
I absolutely don’t care about my looks and I’m so used to them that I wouldn’t change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.