Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why

God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers.

I knew that we had an obligation and that was to keep an energy in it and try to keep the audience interested. In fact, I asked some of the actors to take a look at His Girl Friday, a Howard Hawks film with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, because they talk over each other and there's a great energy.

A "take" is an opportunity to fail ... and we think that we have to get it right all the time.

It isn’t a big jump in the imagination to see yourself living alone like Mr Hoppy.

What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.