A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience's sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.

You never know people, do you? You can work with 'em for twenty years; you don't know 'em at all.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost.

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.

Maggie Smith has a unique sense of comedy, based on a somewhat ironic view of real life, making it both funnier and more sad. But perhaps her greatest ability, or at least the one that most intrigues me, is how she can convey deep and powerful emotion without a trace of sentimentality.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.