“If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would’ve liked to have been John Lennon.”

The thing a drama school can’t give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can’t be taught, and you have to have intuition. It’s an essential ingredient.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it’s a constitution that’s the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it’s the most generous nation in the world.

I’m still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent – you get contaminated after so long.

Shakespeare doesn’t really write subtext, you play the subtext.

I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.

I think filmmaking should be a wonderfully free collaborative process, and it so very rarely is. I often see directors as jailers of my talent.

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you’re really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.

The great thing about Google is that you type in neuro-surgery and somehow you end up with Peter Sellers or watching Frank Sinatra. Google is a great resource.

I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me.

My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can’t beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.

How do you remember all those lines? By forgetting everything else.

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.

I still don’t have a publicist. If I’m in a film, you have an obligation to promote it, I’ll do as much as I can.

The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

If only my heart were stone.

A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

You can’t dream unless you know what the possibilities are.

We are built to be happy, strong and healthy. I fear not to live. We have everything to live up to our dreams. You have everything to achieve that, and in a very short period of time you can get all the tools to manifest who you want to be.

Shall Earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now?

I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action. When I dreamed about having a lemonade stand, for example, it wasn’t long before I set up a lemonade stand.