Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.
One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.
In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.
Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein are each obsessed with death. Hamlet's whole story is a philosophical preparation for death; Victor's is an intellectual refusal to accept it.
It doesn't mean old or younger. I've learned a lot from people much younger than me as well as people much older than me. So I think it's about honesty and generosity.
The best actors, I think, have a childlike quality. They have a sort of an ability to lose themselves. There's still some silliness.
It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.
I come from the theatre, my bones are in the theatre; it’s as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre
I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.
My definition of success is control.
Adults are just children who earn money.
There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.
Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.
As soon as someone I don’t respect tells me I can’t do something, it just makes me want to do it even more.
Aging is the diminishing of early fearlessness.
Don’t stand up when you can sit down and don’t sit down when you can lie down.
I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.
It's quite hard for people to just accept that they're very contradictory.
I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.
I only really cast people who are desperate to be in it - who were dying to be in it, whose talent I believed in and were dead ready to do the work that was necessary.
For all the cynicism that the world contains, people are a little more open to those things that maybe are to do with returning you to some kind of simpler, happier state.
The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.
I think that a lot of exciting elements are finding a place where a film is happily, truly about something.
The ferocity of passion that is engendered by people when they don't like what you've done is really tremendous. It's intense.
When I'm acting, I'm in the director's hands. I'm very happy to be. I like to be focused on what I'm doing.
