Acting is a creative process, and directing and music. I think creative people - and I take myself as a creative person and it doesn't mean you have to be an actor, a musician, or a painter - but I think if you are in a creative profession or a creative business you do have a heightened awareness.

Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air.

I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.

The trick is not to get too fanatical about getting the accent too accurate because then that becomes a mask. What I try to do is just painting and sketching some of the sounds without obliterating my own voice.

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

Shakespeare's so bloody difficult, and I don't like failure. You can fail on film, but there's nobody actually there in the flesh to watch you failing.