Once you've started to dig a hole, you can't get out of it.

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio...

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.

Anything which retains interest is optimistic. When the characters become disinterested, it's pessimistic. Does that make sense?

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

The director [Elfar Adalsteins] came to me through my agent and I had a read of the script [of the "Sailcloth]. I thought immediately this is someone who is writing for the cinema. Not having to go through the tedious business of taking something from literature and making that awful leap that is so difficult to make anyway, from literature to cinema. It's refreshing to be able to deal with a subject like that, to be written where the driving force is the image on screen and you don't need any words. The more that we can do that [in film], the better.

In anything really, it's finding the reality. You can't be 'real,' but you can create a reality. And that created reality is what the audience believes in. And that's essential. Because if the audience doesn't believe that, they're never going to trust you. And if they don't trust you, you can't lead them up the mountain.