“If I ruled the world, every woman would have a Chanel suit in her wardrobe.”

You have all these plans to act, and maybe do it rather elegantly, and then they turn the rain machine on.

The way the elderly are treated, and in some cases warehoused and medicated, rather than nurtured and listened to, is distressing.

Hunger is almost like something the West does. It’s almost like the direct result of the way the West performs.

I love imaginative representations of a possible near-future, where you look at the technology and you think, “Well, yeah, that could really nearly be true.” I like those kinds of backgrounds.

Somebody asked me recently, ‘Have you done a lot of plays?’ I thought hang on. .

I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.

I have no memory, any at all, of actually performing the play, no recall in terms of the lines. I can’t tell you any line from any play I’ve ever done.

Emma Watson is adorable in the extreme. She is such a lovely person.

I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.

One of the things that is assumed about actors is that they are extrovert, which is almost never the case, in my experience.

The job is the same – to attempt to make it sound like you’ve never said it before and as if it’s just occurred to you. And that’s the same whether you’re on camera or whether you’re on stage in a room full of people.

When you have a family, or even when you’re just seeing a girl, it’s difficult to be skint.

I really have no interest in delivering the iambic pentameter, I just want to kill myself. I don’t mind other people doing it. I say that, but really I don’t want to watch other people doing it. I get embarrassed.

I admire David Hare as much as I admire certainly any writer ever. What I like about his writing is it is very conscientiously.

Standing in front of a fake mountain with fake snow falling and seven girls dressed as Santarettes will stay in my memory.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It’s a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.

Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.

The only good thing about fame that I’ve gotten is I’ve gotten out of a couple of speeding tickets. I’ve gotten into a restaurant when I didn’t have a suit and tie on. That’s really about it.

I used to joke that one of the reasons there was a lack of classical work on my CV was because I couldn’t operate in those kinds of trousers. Which is a joke, but it’s actually also true – if I want to appear in public I want to look my best.

I’m not going to throw away the hand of friendship to suit 100 Trotskyites in Glasgow.

Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time.

While other professions are concerned with changing the environment to suit the weakened body, chiropractic is concerned with strengthening the body to suit the environment.

The safe and cultural method of eating crackers in bed is to wear a diver’s suit instead of pajamas.

I thought of something my old coach at Staunton had often said: ‘We win some, we lose some, and some get rained out; but we always suit up.’