I'm not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don't get it right or don't respect others' needs.

I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."

I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: `Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

Something like Shakespeare in Love, which became such an established hit that it now seems like a foregone conclusion... but it really wasn't. The script was around for a very, very long time and had people chickening out all the time.

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.