When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.

I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor.

There's no point in it unless it's a story that you really want to tell. It's a nebulous job. Unless you're doing it well, you're not doing anything. And there are a few of those. It's perfectly possible to be a passenger on a film set because if somebody else has written it, you can make nothing of that role and that's exactly what bad directors do.

People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.

I find that at almost every press junket I get that comment, "this character's different from what you generally play..." And that's OK! But I think "generally play" stems back to Mr Darcy. I'm fine with it but I tend to find that if it's a departure, which in other people's words it always is, it's always a departure from that.