“I don’t feel I’m a compulsive person. I multitask. I’m really well-organised, and I have lots of people to help me.”

Actors aren’t stupid, mostly, and if there’s a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director’s going for, if you’re aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

If the president of the country is not actually saying something, allowing equality to happen, how could you expect to counsel kids not to bully other kids?

You should *have* an experience; it shouldn’t just *be* an experience.

Most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.

You could then, when you lay that as the groundwork, say, “Here I am. This is what I think. I come in peace.” Then you’re able to push out, to be able to talk about more things. And that’s been a really heartening thing about my life, actually.

In terms of the sort of class, and the sort of snobby, slightly on the back-foot thing Britain has. But it’s much more prevalent in America.

It’s about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message.

You’ll see Dame Judi Dench in a Bond film, in Shakespeare and then starring in her own sitcom. You never see that here with Meryl Streep.

Usually, there’s a story I’ve told that leads up to why I’m singing the song. The whole concept of the show was about being authentic and connecting with these songs. The best way to do that was in a room with an audience and for people to listen to that.

Nowadays people don’t know how to handle it if all the ends aren’t tied up and they’re not told what to think in films. And if they’re challenged, they think it’s something wrong with the film.

It is actually important to do songs they’re familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I’ve changed people’s perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn’t interest me.

My feeling about work is it’s much more about the experience of doing it than the end product. Sometimes things that are really great and make lots of money are miserable to make, and vice versa.

When there’s an adult person who’s scaring you, you grow up pretty quickly.

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

It’s really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.

My personality’s very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.

I’m pretty obsessive-compulsive and I’m very fast.