'La Dolce Vita' made we want to go to Rome and, if not jump into the Trevi Fountain, at least watch someone else do it. Maybe that's why I married an Italian...!

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

As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.

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

I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

Some people come up to be directors by coming through the camera department and there's not a lot of women in the camera department. The ones that are have to kind of prove they're one of the boys, I think. I don't want to get into trouble with generalisations but I think it's a fair observation.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.