As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theater. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that.

I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.

Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, and rest a lot.

A film is the director's medium. The theater is an actor's.

I had a fairly enlightened dad, though if you looked at his resume, it might not seem that way. He was a chartered accountant for Price Waterhouse. He was strict, and we had a very ordered life. To this day, I am the least materialistic person I know, because my father didn't raise me to just go out and buy this or that car.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

I know I'm not known as method. By nature I'm not a brooder. What I continue to use is a mixture of the English school, which is traditionally outside-in, and the more American way of working from the inside out.