I remember thinking, 'I'll audition just once and if it doesn't work out I'll never think about it ever again.'

I like challenges. If you're involved, as one is, in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself. You don't want to repeat what you're done before.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

You can't really do a lot of research for being a mass manipulating, murdering super-villain.

People are fascinated by evil because its mysterious and it doesnt seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really.

You get ideas from other people all the time.