I toyed with the idea of what it might be like to live with some species of heatstroke that maybe didn't go away all that quickly. He's a pirate, which is about rum, sodomy and the lash, isn't it? So, to be able to keep things like that in my head, when I'm going to do a film for Disney, I'd been through the ringer. That was like infiltrating the enemy camp. I wasn't able to stop smiling.

I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.

You can go out and try to do the best work that you can do within the context of what that is, but it's really gotta be about the work and what you're focusing on.

And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book.

I do believe that you have to bring some degree of truth from yourself to the role [Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ]in and I'll admit it here, I have shaved a grown man before. I have done it. And it wasn't Tim [Burton].

Trips to the dentist - I like to postpone that kind of thing.

I found the evil in myself a long time ago, and I've accepted it. We're old friends.