“We’re living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.”

Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don’t think he’s one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.

The more charming person is the person who admits the other person is more charming.

Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don’t see yourself.

I was the boy that turned a girlfriend into the most celebrated lesbian on television. I got so much stick for that.

If you can’t jump on board when the ride’s going past that’s it, it usually goes by, so the hugest compliment they paid me was to come back to me. It motivated me to try to fulfill their faith.

People’s hands fascinate me. It’s tempting to look at a businessman’s left hand and see if there’s an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there’s a tan line and the skin is pressed down where’s he’s worked a ring off his finger.

I can’t stop traffic on Fifth Avenue, not unless I walk in front of an oncoming cab.

I feel that TV and film feed off each other well. It’s more in the perception of the viewer than it is of the actor.

I’d love to do a noir. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You’re treading on very thin ice.

I haven’t done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you’re most recently famed for, so I’m careful of not repeating myself.

If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people’s expectations, then you can go mad.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan’s ‘The Browning Version,’ where my job was to make school-masters’ wives weep with recognition.

I have pitfalls. I have emotional responses to things that are really not about me. They’re about other people.

There’s no shame in stealing – any actor who says he doesn’t is lying. You steal from everything.

He who fights, can lose. He who doesn’t fight, has already lost.

Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.

There’s always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.

If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.

I don’t have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn’t very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge ’cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

As a fighter, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get the big fights.

Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight.

People are still people, and they make their decisions based on their life experiences and their beliefs. You really can’t divorce the two. It’s important to fight against stereotypes and oversimplifications in very complex people.