I try to shave at night so my skin has a chance to settle by the early morning call-time.

When I went to LA I was almost 30, I'd been nominated for two Tony awards, and on the New York theatre scene I was pretty well known. I went out to LA to meet with casting people, and I remember walking into one meeting and saying: "Hey, how are you? I'm Patrick..." And they said: "I'm so sorry! I thought you were British!" When I asked why, she replied: "Because you're 30 and I've never heard of you!"

When you're playing the good guy, you want to find the dirty parts - and when you're playing the bad guy, you want to find the vulnerability.

For me, it doesn't matter whether it's a comedy, a Western or horror. As long as you've got a good story to tell, the genre almost doesn't matter. As an actor playing the role, it's all rooted in reality.

When you shoot a movie so quickly you can't really afford to shoot a bunch of extra footage because you don't have that luxury.

Mike Nicholls saw me in the musical of The Full Monty and brought me in to audition for Angels in America for HBO. And that opened a lot of doors because you could go to LA and say: "Well, I'm starring opposite Al Pacino and Meryl Streep..."

You know, I gotta be honest. I have not done a lot of CGI work. I just haven't. I mean, there were hundreds of effects in Watchmen, and I probably dealt with almost none of them, because all my stuff was very practical.