“I like being in kids’ movies, and I like being in family movies.”

I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t even own a computer.

Try to be in the day. Try to not have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow.”

Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect.

As you get older you feel you need to pay more attention to what is around you and relish it. I’m greedy for beauty.

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 don’t even own a car.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they’d arrest you for crimes against acting.

I wanted to be a journalist, I thought it was glamorous and that I’d meet beautiful women in the rain.

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. .

We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport.

You can play some schlock like New Kids On the Block.

Kids, Madison Avenue is lying to you. Your parents are lying to you. The president is lying to you.

It’s so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying “Shhh” and not moving a muscle.

My parents were vegetarians. I’d show up at school, this giant black kid, with none of the cool clothes and a tofu sandwich and celery sticks.

Back in the days when I was young I’m not a kid anymore But some days I sit and wish I was a kid again

As a kid, I wasn’t given the sense that celebrity, or fame or any of that,

It’s been very humbling and very cool to see [that at] each show I tend to see more and more kids lock onto the new lyrics and every night they start to sing louder and louder and it’s just been very exciting.