When it comes to parenthood everyone thinks they will be terrible at it. We don’t think we have it in us. Then you find out that you do, which truly is a miracle in life.
The one thing that I appear to have been given, bearing in mind that I am capable of being very, very scatty and extremely lazy, is the ability to concentrate on something I choose to give my time to.
I was a savage for so many years of my life. There was some seed of determination in me that I was not conscious of. I was mostly consciously getting into trouble and drunk.
I have a strange relationship with time. I’m not aware of it passing.
You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you’re suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another.
At some point in your life, if you’re lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.
A voice is such a deep, personal reflection of character.
I find it difficult to be in rooms now for long periods of time. I can usually take it for about an hour. Then I stride out.
I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
I don’t like to rehearse. And I couldn’t understand how you could go through eight weeks of rehearsal, without exhausting every possibility. To the point where, you know, you would just lie gasping on the floor!
Actors should never give interviews.
For about a year, I just didn’t know what to do. I did laboring jobs, working in the docks, construction sites.
Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful.
There are always practical decisions to be made about any character you’re playing.
I’m not sure you learn anything on film sets.
England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.
I’d always felt very strongly in the power of vocation.
I broke things to get attention.
I have always been intrigued by these lives I have never experienced.
My preference is that, that day when someone sticks a tripod in front of you with a camera on the top, it is not day one.