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.
There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.
We're in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter... [Language] is being eroded -- it's changing. Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.
I think Shakespeare is like a dialect. If I heard a broad Scots accent, I'd probably struggle at first but then I'd start to look for words I recognise and I'd get the gist. I think Shakespeare is like that.
I don't plan a career. That doesn't work for me. I just have to go with my gut.
I guess I'd love to be surprised by something I had never thought of.
There's a lot of people who feel there's a tabloid journalist who had it coming.
Education, awareness and prevention are the key, but stigmatisation and exclusion from family is what makes people suffer most
I learned a lot about acting - watching not just myself but other actors and learning how to distinguish between two great takes. It's also about one's own taste in performance.
I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. How do I know, but I think I'm quite good at saying, "That's no good. That's no good. That's it. That's it. That's good." And I'm with the editor who goes, "No, I think you're wrong. That's not your best." There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it.
I spent the past week here in India getting a sense of the reality of HIV and AIDS in people's lives. Fathers and mothers are dying, leaving children with no support. Stigma and discrimination is ruining the family lives. There is an urgent need for education, information, and increased awareness of HIV and AIDS. The response needs to be now. We cannot afford to become fatigued.
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!'
I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.
Gardeners are good at nurturing, and they have a great quality of patience, they're tender. They have to be persistent.
Like anything to do with trust, in any relationship it emerges and just the chemistry, vibe between two people an actor and a director. You just know whether this is someone I like to be with whose interaction with me I believe in.
I feel there's so much still to learn about acting. But there is some magic in the capturing of performance and in the process of editing a performance. The psychology of human beings and what's coming through the face... that fascinates me.
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.
The tensions between authority and the people need to be heard, especially when they are suffering and they can't eat.
Awards are like applause, and every actor likes to hear applause.
Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.
You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.
It's thrilling to have the opportunity to work in different areas, whether it's on a project that has all the resources behind it like Harry Potter or James Bond and then to go somewhere there's very few resources.
The sets were fantastic. The Harry Potter sets are brilliant. You do get transported for a second.
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.
I loved doing Harry Potter. I had a great time on that. And I think it's good to have a mix. I think you're learning all the time.
