“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.”

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

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 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.

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.

I find it weird that people want to know about you.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: “I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can’t. It’s the best film I’ve seen since Citizen Kane”.

One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.

I found myself in a maze where I’d taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

Do you wish to see clearly and be free?

I wish there was something more that performers could do other than get out there and sing at benefit performances. I wish I felt that if I had an empty room I’d like to bring in someone and make it a hospice, but I’m not Mother Teresa. I can’t do that.

When I’m not a politician, I’ll be dead.

Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!’ said Jimmy longingly. ‘How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night!

Whatever your dreams are, start taking them very, very seriously.