Moving from chair to chair, from coffee machine to coffee machine is the limit of my action in most films. But I enjoy being cast in them because I love watching them.
When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.
I think the fact that I’m so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen. It wouldn’t be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman – I’ll kiss a frog if you like.
Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.
I’ve always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden’s animations.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it’ll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
I shouldn’t be saying this – high treason, really – but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.
It was extremely important to show that Wilde’s sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.
It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you.
I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you’re never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style. It’s in the spirit of it.
There is no particular Socratic or Dimechian or Kantian way to live your life. They don’t offer ethical codes and standards by which to live your life.
But if one could go back in time, I’d love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who’s one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in ‘Rio Bravo’.
They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we’re not 100 per cent human, that we’re always letting ourselves down. We’re constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.
