I'm terrified of learning lines, and I've always been terrified that I won't learn them.

Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside of a family. People are driven to distraction by a father or a mother or a husband. Or a child.

You could build three hospitals with the cost of one film and I take that very seriously.

You have to go through the long, painful process of learning techniques to be able to recognize a "good accident" or a "bad accident."

What you want is a comfortable environment that you feel you can invent in. Because film is such a lumbering, technical, huge, great Neanderthal thing, it's hard to create that little space of peace, and calm, and creativity, and ease. That's what you want the director to create for you, so that when you walk on the set, you forget all of that, and the fact that it's costing gazillions of dollars a second.

I'm not strong-willed actually. I'm a complete pushover. I love to be told what to do.

Americans are very good at animating voices. I don't know why. They have a freedom with them that we British actors find more difficult to get to.