Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe.

I guess I've been fortunate in having an ongoing film career while being based in Melbourne. I'm happy to commute. A day on a plane. Come on. It's easy.

Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.

I always felt thrilled and amazed that I could put actor on my tax form.

If in the sex scene you happen to be naked in front of a lot of other people you've just got to put that aside, in the same way that you have to put that aside in a fully-clothed intense dialogue scene because you're entering into that particular imaginative state of play.

When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas.

For sure, you have to be lost to find a place that can’t be found.