I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.
You get ideas from other people all the time.
It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.
I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.
If you only take parts that are offered to you, you end up playing the same roles over and over again. I think it's important to keep auditioning. I think it's important to scare yourself; to take parts that are outside of your comfort zone.
I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.
Matt Weiner is an amazing writer. He's one of the best, greatest writers that's ever written for television, or just written.
People are fascinated by evil because its mysterious and it doesnt seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.
I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.
I keep mementos from everything I've done. I've got my cab driver's license from 'Happiness.' I've got a pair of glasses and a belt buckle from playing John Lennon. I've got a pair of sunglasses from playing Andy Warhol... It's all in a box in the garage.
You can't really do a lot of research for being a mass manipulating, murdering super-villain.
When you're at drama school you spend so much time working on amazing texts and analyzing them, digging into them, and figuring out why it happens, why you are being asked to say what you're saying, and what the words mean. But then when you start working, most of the stuff would just fall apart if you subject it to that kind of scrutiny.
When preparing for a role, a month is a luxury. Sometimes you've maybe got two weeks before you start on something. So you have to learn how to do it quickly. And the longer you have a role, that it lives in your imagination, the more you're going to be able to contribute when you get on set. Because it's really about your subconscious having time to sit with the part, so you're out doing something and then something occurs to you, you know?
Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really.
In the old patrician world there was a custom once a week you had to eat a meal with your slaves and get to know them as people.
I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.
I keep mementos from everything I've done.
I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.
I've done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though - come on, it's brilliant. I love a good death scene!
I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they're having a shower. It's fun.
I remember thinking, 'I'll audition just once and if it doesn't work out I'll never think about it ever again.'
Often in films there's more of allowing the actors to make the dialogue fit better in their own. Also, you get to a location and the geography is different, so the lines don't line up the right way, so you do have to change stuff.
If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.
One of the things that I was interested in about Moriarty was - he's so manipulative that he doesn't need to commit violence himself or kill people - he can get everyone to do what he needs to do. And sometimes they don't even know that they are being manipulated by him.
I really wanted to get out of England.
