I admire David Hare as much as I admire certainly any writer ever. What I like about his writing is it is very conscientiously, 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.

In the street, people talk to you about all kinds of things, but by far, the most number of people talk to me about Love, Actually.

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

I really have no interest in delivering the iambic pentameter, I just want to kill myself. I don't mind other people doing it. I say that, but really I don't want to watch other people doing it. I get embarrassed.

When a movie is called 'searingly honest,' it's almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get.

I did actually sit down with a blank sheet of paper once. I think the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.