The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they've got the guts to say, 'I don't know.'
I never expected to have any kind of film career, to be honest. It was all a bit of a surprise. But I was in a big hit play on Broadway. America, as many people will say, says yes more often than we do. And so I was suddenly surrounded by people saying yes. But I was aware that was 'cause of what I was in. It had a big impact.
I have a love-hate relationship with white silk.
Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.
On film you put all your energies into a single glance.
In theater, you've got to be aware of your whole body because it involves stamina. It involves two-and-a-half hours and a sustained release of energy, maybe for six months.
Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.
I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.
I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.
I was coming from a very cerebral, dark, difficult, layered play by Christopher Hampton and doing an action movie in Hollywood (Die Hard) with explosions, and I was holding a gun.
I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.
You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.
Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.
Actors are actually very supportive of each other.
On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes.
Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.
Being on the stage in New York is always exciting because you feel like you're part of the life of the city.
From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other.
Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.
I'm a quite serious actor who doesn't mind being ridiculously comic.
If you judge the character, you cant play it.
England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.
My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.
Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,'' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'
If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.
