I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.

I generally do things I'm proud to be in and generally I'm in things people like.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It's a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.

I don't do plays without jokes anymore. I've retired from those plays. I think it's bad manners to invite people to sit in the dark for two and a half hours and not tell them the joke.

I am a fan of rehearsal. I like doing it [scene] over and over and over and over until it looks like you never did it before.

Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth. If you imagine yourself having to spend two and a bit hours cooking bolognaise, remembering a whole major work by David Hare and speaking it at the correct moment between chopping carrots and stirring the onions in front of an audience - the normal human response is 'Please, can I go to the airport?'

I do think 3D has seriously improved, since I was a boy. It's fabulous.