I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic – basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately.
I don’t mean being famous is a perk, because one knows that it’s not necessarily a perk, but there are certain perks to being well-known and respected in one’s field. Public perks. Like, I don’t know, general friendliness and willingness to please, just to point out two.
During an election, it’s like they’re doing my job: they’re going around banging the drum for their party and selling their movie. You know, it’s the same thing.
I’ve a problem with the word charity because I think that NGOs, as I prefer calling them, really do take the work of moral and social responsibilities that ought to be taken on by governments.
And it’s absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating – and the levels of the communication that I’ve seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don’t we have that here?
Tell him I mind having to look pretty, that’s what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort.
Sometimes you’ll have some things, and sometimes you’ll have other things. And you do not need it all at once; it’s not good for you.
I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups.
I don’t have technique because I never learnt any.
Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.
Children don’t need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.
Indeed – judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.
A lot of people in my world – in the acting world – have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.
British aren’t really known for their physical loveliness but firemen, generally speaking, are gorgeous.
My appearance has changed a lot over the years, but it has far more to do with how I feel about being a woman.
But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I’ve failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don’t get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.
I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn’t much of a stretch.
I have had lots of friends who’ve been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.
We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.
Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we’ve stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos.