I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.

Girlfriends are vital ... Maggie [Gyllenhaal] and I will always see each other when Maggie's in London or I'm here. We'll always make time to sit and catch up properly.

I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.

My mother has never approved of high heels. As a result, I have never been able to walk in high heels - and they were all I ever wanted. So of course, my daughter has two pairs.

It doesn't matter how good the movie is. What matters is what it takes during the opening weekend. It's slightly distressing sometimes but that's how it works.

The trouble is it's very difficult to pin-point the most important thing because Aids affects everyone in different levels of society, differently and you have to respond to it differently.

I think we're creating a situation that's incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of chat at the moment about the war on terror and whilst there are many causes for acts of terrorism, what kind of society are you creating if you allow civil society in Africa to die and create millions upon millions of orphans? Where are they going to go? What kind of cults, what kind of militias, what's going to happen? The accession of violence in those countries, the possibility of that, to me is very terrifying.