“The most difficult part, when you decide to make running a part of your life style, is the basic initial commitment.”

In one way, an attempt to reproduce the way people actually speak, but it’s not just an attempt at naturalism. It’s stylised and it’s heightened, to great effect. It’s elegant and it’s funny and that’s the way to my heart, frankly.

Whatever you do, don’t smoke’. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.

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.

My mother is very wise and intelligent. If I have children and can do half as good a job as she did in keeping me in line, I’ll be very happy.

The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.

I could finally quit my job as a bartender and stop dreaming that I might be Superman and know that I was. Then I started thinking about how cool it was.

Do you realize that God expects you to consider that you are actually working for Jesus Christ on your job?

I would like to become the prime minister, do the job for two years, and then leave and devote myself to public work.

The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck & to provide new ways to get it unstuck.

Michael Riley Burke who played [Ted] Bundy did a really good job. He does look like him too, so it does make it hard and there are aspects of it, of course, that are just terrifying.

I know that being an in-house person is much, much harder than being outside…that’s why I’ve never had a job.