“Being a good director is knowing sometimes when not to say something.”

I went and lived in Chicago for a year , and I studied at the police academy.

As an actor, you people-watch, you observe. And the more famous you become, the sad thing is you lose the ability to do that. Instead of people-watching, you become the focus of attention.

Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.

I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.

Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.

I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they’re older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.

Political correctness has become a straightjacket.

People who know me , they know I have a sense of humor, I’m a bit of a joker, a bit of a clown really, and I would love someone to exploit that side of me and send me a romantic comedy.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don’t want to travel; I don’t want to be in a hotel room away from my family.

I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There’s that period in the late ’90s, the early 2000s, where I didn’t do a great deal.

Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.

So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.

Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of Beethoven.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors.

Actors aren’t stupid, mostly, and if there’s a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director’s going for, if you’re aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.

Exodus is a very large organization. My board of directors is supportive of me as the president of Exodus and are very much involved in my decision-making and those types of things.

It’s really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.

A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.