My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.

I think there's always great tension because there never seems to be enough - there is always pressure. There's always pressure because there isn't enough time. There's never enough time for a movie, it seems to me. Never.

I find it very difficult to do anything on my own now because people recognize me. This has never happened to me before because I haven't really done television before. But I suppose if you're in people's rooms all the time, I don't know - I was thinking the other night with people like DiCaprio and, you know, those big stars and Cate Blanchett, and you just think how did they exist? It's so difficult. And I think now it's very intrusive because of these cellphones, you know, with cameras.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.