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.

You have to go where the good writing is.

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

People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

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

I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl — in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I, on the other hand, spent eight months with my face squashed up against someone else’s backside in one sodden trench after another. And it looks as if Tom might have got the girl again [in Colditz], damn his eyes.