I've never done a [Berthold] Brecht. In the 1960s when the Berliner Ensemble came over [to England] with Helene Weigel [Brecht's second wife], I saw all the Berlin actors. It was an amazing time, very exciting early 1960s.

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

Something like 'Alien,' that was not so easy. If there's any genre I wouldn't mind not having to do anymore, it would be science fiction. It's just all to do with the toys, and there's so much hanging around.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

It's quite interesting, looking back at the first one [film about Harry Potter], nobody knew whether or not it was going to be successful as a film. The books were of course already very successful, but that's happened before, where the books were successful and the films weren't at all. But it turned out that they were.

I got used to [ Lars Von Trier] doing the narration for 'Dogville' and 'Manderley.' And I said to him I do these narrations for you but you never put me in a film! So he called my bluff and put me in 'Melancholia' and I was thrilled about that.

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.