I can't re-examine work I did in the past with pride.

I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

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.

Film has become such a central part of our culture now that I think sometimes too great a weight is placed upon it in terms of scrutiny and analysis. There's a lot of rather specious professorial stuff that swirls around films.

If you have a certain wildness of spirit, a cabinet maker's workshop is not the place to express it.

Periodically over the years I've always taken periods of time away from acting.

When I do work, I feel the same sort of urgency as I ever did. If I didn't feel that, I don't think I would wish to be doing it. I wouldn't really see the point.