You look worldwide for the great leaders, and they're pretty thin on the ground, and of course the problem is unless you're squeaky, squeaky clean, something is going to come out of the cupboard. Most people aren't squeaky clean. Most people have fallen by the wayside once or twice in their lives, and because the world is so transparent now, I think they're very fearful of running for office. It's a huge shame, because often people who have really lived and are amazing people can be brought down by a past indiscretion.

Anywhere I can ski in the morning and sell a movie in the afternoon is good.

The work I prefer to do are the smaller budget pictures, television can be great but it ties you up for quite a long time.

I've always believed that the great strength of the Internet is that it allows us to communicate with each other, it allows debate. And I think that gay marriage is a huge step forward. But debate is throwing ideas about, and when it becomes sort of a weapon of character assassination, I think that's crazy. I think the situation in America is different from in England, where we have civil partnership, and now the vote on gay marriage has been carried, and whether it will go through Parliament I don't know.

I have to say that I've reached the state of my career where I quite like not to work. Strange enough, I'm busier than ever. I'm not spending every waking hour beside a telephone waiting for it to ring.

It's always useful to be in big movies for one's career.

My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.