If you haven't turned rebel by twenty you've got no heart; if you haven't turned establishment by thirty you've got no brains!

It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.

The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.

I'm supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I'm somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you've got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I'm somebody else?

I find drinking really helps.

The process of doing a play is an organic one and the process of doing a film is totally un-organic.

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.