“I’m crazy about James Brown. I’m crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.”

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.

Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

Then, believe it or not, along came the wave of the English cats like John Mayall, Eric Clapton and the Stones embracing the great American art form – the blues.

Read books, discover the blues and don’t Tweet.