Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
It's a very dangerous state. You are inclined to recklessness and kind of tune out the rest of your life and everything that's been important to you. It's actually not all that pleasurable. I don't know who the hell wants to get in a situation where you can't bear an hour without somebody's company.
My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.
I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.
I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: `Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.
You have to be ill if you want to get better.
I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap
Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.
The skill of a good actor is to make it always seem like you're in that fantastically spontaneous moment. Very often, a stand-up comedian has a different instinct, which is to reinvent. Once you've laid down some material, and made them laugh, you move on and find some new material.
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.
I'm just the last English twit, really.
Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.
When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.
I have almost no memory of them [St. Trinian's films]. I don't think I've seen them since I was quite young. I was a bit frightened of the girls. I fancied them. Even though I was young, I found them attractive and rather frightening. I've always been attracted to frightening girls! I'm married to one!
Nothing brings you closer together than blind terror.
My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.
I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.
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.
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.
To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.
I love you even when you're sick and look disgusting.
What infuriates me is that in America violence is judged in context, whereas language is not. So with language there is an arithmetic that says: one f*** is a PG 13, two f***s is an R. They don't say: one bullet through one head is a PG 13, two bullets through more than two heads is an R.
Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.
Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.
