I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.

Violence is a very ugly thing. Violence is often so casual on film, and made to look so cool and so sexy, but violence is a repulsive, repugnant act that human beings inflict on each other. It shouldn't seem to be cool and sexy, ever really.

One of the things I like about doing historical films is drawing the line between now and then.

I'd never read a piece of television where it's an hour script and it's perfect.

Actors tend to get better with age. You start cutting away the useless stuff and achieving a point of effortlessness and simplicity, which is all you want to do, with any art at all.

I think the older I get, the less I should be doing.

Im not a big fan of patterns. I like the unexpected.