You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.

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.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.

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

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.

In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'