I don't think Hamlet is mad, nor is he predisposed to be a gloomy or tragic figure.

Everything is important, but there is a weight to these big or expected things and then there is the logistics of them and it's trying to find, while you worry about for instance the ballroom scene, how do you get 500 people to go to the loo in corsets and don't cost you an hour and how do you remember while you're organizing all that to take a breath and say, 'Well the scene is about all of that and it's about Prince hand on the small of Cinderella back as well' and we need time to do that properly as well.

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.

Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.

Helena Bonham-Carter and I sat down to talk about [Cinderella movie] and she said, 'I really want to do it but only one thing I insist on and that's wings.' She had to have wings and [costume designer] Sandy Powell didn't want wings to begin with but had to be talked around, but that was fun.

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.