The theater is a need for me. It's a terrible attraction, something I'm compelled to do. And one derives a form of nourishment from the theater which you can never get from films. Making films weakens you in some way. With the theater, the work itself is a regenerative process.

When it comes to parenthood everyone thinks they will be terrible at it. We don't think we have it in us. Then you find out that you do, which truly is a miracle in life.

One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.

You've just provided me with the makings of one hell of a weekend in Dublin.

I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

I don't deal at all well with the relative amount of stuff I have to face already.

I would like to have children while I've still got the energy. But then I have the feeling that when I have children I'll stop performing in the same way, because you don't really need to perform if you have children.