“Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn’t there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can’t.”

I think if I were to go back on stage I might be in great danger of acting.

In order to inhabit a villain, you mustn’t care what the audience think of you. That’s not why you are there. You mustn’t care for a second whether the audience likes you or dislikes you. Your villain has to be way beyond that.

The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.

I would like to make it known, on this program, loud and clear, that I would absolutely embrace with all five of my arms being a Bond villain.

You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.

I’m open to any project, but my joyful projects are those through which I can say something and through which I can speak to the an audience of people in the world, and I can be that vehicle through which something can be said, I find that entirely thrilling and joyful.

The leaping Jaguar on the bonnet, to me, makes it look more like a hunter than something that is getting away. It’s a hunter. Richard III definitely would have had a chauffeur driven Jaguar MK X.

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.

We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they’re good actors.

They’re a very strange lot actors, very strange people.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I’m waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.

It’s Sir Ben. I’ve not been a Mister for two years.

You don’t go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that’s benign conquest. It’s a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.

I’m convinced that had I not changed my name, I don’t think I would have had quite the same career curve that I eventually had.

One of the greatest things drama can do, at it’s best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.

When I entered federal parliament at the end of 2007, I was appointed parliamentary secretary for disabilities.

The shallow end of hope is usually the deep end of grace.

A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know.

Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.

In the end, your creativity — perhaps even your outrageousness — will determine the final result.

I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence… and he said “parole”.

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment.

It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.