When people come and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.

I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

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.

When people come and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.

Freedom is the kind of essence of being a pirate: You're away from land-locked Europe. You're not part of the society. You're part of the brotherhood of the sea, Your ship is your sense of identity. So when you approach the wheel, that's what you own.

I didn't know the Green Lantern comics at all. I was a Superman reader.

Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.