I put every ounce of myself into my work, but also it's important that I don't miss every single wedding of my best friends.

I think good things come out of having tension with the people that you work with. You've got to be arguing in order to produce something interesting. If everyone's just agreeing with each other, you're not going to push the boundaries.

"The Theory of Everything" is an extraordinary story because [Jane Hawing] was incredibly religious and [Stephen Hawking] was an atheist, so you have this conflict both on a domestic level between a couple in a difficult situation but also this bigger conflict of science versus religion, so it's a really fascinating project.

There's so much of a desire in the entertainment industry for newness, a desire to build somebody up and then treat them as old news within six months. I think you'd be naive if you didn't try to hold on to your own way of doing things.

I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.

My mother [was in advertising and] worked incredibly hard when she was bringing us up. She was a working mother and a working single parent.

As a child, I always liked dressing up and getting into character, and actors are lucky in being able to retain that playfulness, though we do seem to find it hard to grow up.