The phrase you usually hear after a cut is "That was great. Perhaps we could have another go. Maybe try it this way." Even that much direction is prefaced with a lot of praise and encouragement. It's quite like how you deal with toddlers: positive reinforcement, and then a little suggestion that you might want to try something different. Roman Polanski will stop the take and shout, "No, no, no!" Which is somewhat alarming the first time it happens.

Roman Polanski actually said as much to me once. He had his head in his hands, and I said, "Roman, I've got to tell you, as an actor, seeing the director with his head in his hands... Look, I really want to do what you want me to do." And he went away and he came back, having obviously thought about what I said. And he said, "When my head is in my hands, I'm closing my eyes and trying to remember what I saw in my head, before any of the stuff."

Family holidays and weekends are really brightly colored memories, full of my mother and father, rather than our nannies and au pairs.

I think it's quite lucky that I lead this lifestyle, and in fact, my career's only gotten better as I've looked older, because it ages you, the uncertainty.

There's this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer's here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here, and you're not allowed to get yourself from these three places.

I'm a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, a bit of Spanish and one-eighth American. I've often wondered if I have an Asiatic ancestor from the East as well because I have deep-set eyes. Make-up artists are constantly trying to shade my eyelids, and I have to point out that I don't have any!

I loved Rushmore. I loved the script. I mean, that is what drew me to it, just the actual piece of literature the script is. But I never thought in a million years that anyone would see it or respond to it. It was an absolute joy that it was so loved and continues to be. The same with The Sixth Sense. I thought, "No one's going to watch this. Bruce Willis hasn't got a gun. There's no shagging. Lovely story, sweet and profound about loss and death, but no one's going to watch this."