I'm under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry.

Ill-informed intuition is fantastic - it's what great art is. So really old painters or writers or actors are brilliant, because they've finally reached the point when they can let go of al technique.

Women are always self-effacing and self-denying. There's a term that enrages me, and I always used to swear that I'd never play characters described that way. The term is "long-suffering."

I couldn't handle the rules the Queen has to live by at all, and very few of us could. It's a golden cage, really. You're never alone in that role - you are always surrounded by security.

I certainly think that he [Alan Rickman] was a kind of actor who needed to grow into his maturity to realize the potential, the huge potential that he had.

My fear of drama school is that the natural extraordinary but eccentric talent sometimes can't find its place in a drama school. And often that's the greatest talent. And it very much depends on the drama school and how it's run and the teachers. It's a different thing here in America as well because so many of your great actors go to class, which is sort of we don't do in England.

You can't control how other people see you or think of you. But you have to be comfortable with that.