I absolutely don't care about my looks and I'm so used to them that I wouldn't change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.

I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.

Firth - all dodgy 'tache and frantic eyebrows - has got the sexual allure of a man who runs a swingers' club in Surbiton.

If you're playing someone who's got marital problems, you have to play someone who's trying not to have marital problems. So, you've got to get into the problem first.

There's a paraphrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.

One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.

Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.