I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes. I got my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times. That was my research.
When you get into the edit you’ll understand what making a film is. You’ll see all the things you missed and all the possibilities you have from what you shot.
You dread that there will be real problems during filming.
Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don’t go out there saying I want to do adaptations.
Kenya doesn’t have much of an infrastructure for hosting a film.
I certainly gained a lot by reading about Shanghai.
Unicef’s education initiative does not seek to impose, but to initiate and integrate. It does, however, aim to address the huge bias towards education for boys at the expense of girls in so many cultures.
News reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising...
Unicef wants to encourage a sense of stability for a child.
Awards are like applause, and every actor likes to hear applause.
I’m interested in the spirits of people. In the theatre, there’s the acting part of acting – and I’m not saying that can’t be great – and there’s the essence. To explore that essence, you need a key, a look, a gesture, an insight that unlocks the person’s soul.
Ridicule is also a weapon against forces of evil. Really clever, intelligent ridicule.
The sets were fantastic. The Harry Potter sets are brilliant. You do get transported for a second.
And although I’ve been very fortunate in the film work that’s come my way, I need to get back to the stage. If I’m away for a maximum of two years, I feel something’s wrong.
So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.
In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there’s a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system.
I got to read some writings by serial killers, and they got inside my head. They were quite disturbing. I read disturbing stuff about that very detached way of manipulating people to do things.
I think I feel more like you’re an actor for hire and you take the jobs you want to take, obviously, and some pay well and some don’t pay well at all but you go on a gut feeling and it’s all a big adventure.
There is a tension in relationships between wanting to return to the womb, but also wanting to be free. Because sometimes the woman’s attentions can be overly maternal, and you want to go, ‘Ahhhh!’
There’s a challenge to playing these fantasy figures because they are fantasy figures. You have to enter into this sort of imaginative world of the writer.
Little moments can have a feeling and a texture that is very real.