One of the great regrets of my life is that I smoked. If I could say anything to anybody starting out in life it would be, 'Whatever you do, don't smoke'. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.

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.

More people saw me in 'Love Actually' than had seen me in everything else I had ever done up to that point.

When it comes to casual clothing, my enthusiasm for clothes starts to waver.

There is something, yeah, I mean traditionally it's more fun to play bad guys than it is good guys and when you're playing a bad guy, yeah, the fun in it is to see how scary you can be, how horrible you can be. And it's surprising what you come up with.

One of the reasons I like a suit is because I've never been that keen on my body. The shape a suit presents is always going to be better than anything I can do.

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.