I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

There is a wealth of knowledge to be understood from others' work, don't get me wrong, and when I do stumble upon others' work, it's not lost on me.

"I'm going to show you I haven't given you permission because clearly you're not grown up enough to understand that, not having given you permission, you can't just come look in my house." And I won't know if they're coming and looking or not... so I put a piece of tape over it.

You have this certain about of responsibility to play a fictitious character and you have a script that's guiding you and the other information of the custom department's choices, and the set department, "Where are you," and all those other pieces of information but you have to cull from your imagination the answer to all the unasked questions. And with a real person, there's someone to get that information from, perhaps.

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.