“Even today, England is a very repressed, repressive country, and there’s pressure to be kind of a certain way, so people do things that ultimately make them sad.”

I’ve been out to LA a couple of times but, over there, the Grenouille in me always comes to the surface. I feel completely terrified, totally flummoxed, like I don’t understand what the hell is going on. I’ve no desire at all to go back there.

I’ve gone on workout regimes, but I seem to have a system that is very resistant to changing.

I love the characters I’ve had the opportunity to play.

What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they’re great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.

I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I’m still fascinated by those things.

I am a typical Libran. I tend to see two sides of everything.

I’d like to have a go at directing.

When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way – they make you look at the world in a different way.

The criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws.

We are so mired in the complexity of our reactions to other people that when you come across someone who is asocial, there is a simplicity that is refreshing.

Filmmakers tell stories to explore human nature, which is always a flawed thing.

My intuition comes up with better stuff than my head, I think.

I’m really hopeless with technology – I don’t even have a computer.

I wish that the arts were better supported, and you can’t say that enough times, but I also believe that whatever happens, artists will keep going.

For me, it’s important to keep a level of anonymity.

I think that sometimes in theater, I don’t prepare much beyond going to the rehearsals.

You know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today’s life and no discussion of the real conditions – which is really sickening.

We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It’s very materialistic. It’s full of desire and luxury goods.

Many things happened in my life, and I thought that they changed me. But in the end, nothing has changed since I was seventeen.

Today, we jump into this globalization of the economy and the internet age.

I don’t like China. Even today, I still feel I have no emotional relations with this place.

If I could keep today’s happiness I wouldn’t worry about tomorrow.

Today the search for a new global order is under way.

So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.