Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part.

Theres something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.

You just have to take control of your own performance.

Quiet people, people who arent given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - theyre also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.