I don't know if there's a problem with original ideas... I think a healthy film industry should have a good supply of good, original writing.

It was mainly to do with Helen Hunt, to be honest. That's what drew my attention to it. I was interested in the fact that she was going to be directing. I'd never met her but she projects a degree of intelligence and it was convincing t me that she'd be able to handle this sort of material very well.

My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.

When I visited coffee farms in Ethiopia, the farmers could not believe we spend a week's wages in their country on a cup of coffee in ours, because they see so little of the profits. Oxfam's fair trade campaign helps right this wrong.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

Nothing brings you closer together than blind terror.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.