My favourite British spots are any of the beautiful parks, especially on a sunny day such as this, after a long stretch of cold, cloudy and rainy days.

Families are like puzzles. They fit together in a certain way, and if one piece is missing, it throws everything off.

Most actors, unless they're big movie stars and can carve out huge chunks of time to focus on one movie that takes six months - the rest of us have to jump around to make ends meet.

I had been used to improvising and even in the audition I was feeling free to rearrange Aaron Sorkin words a little bit, as lovely as they were. I didn't find out until after I got the part how furious Aaron was at me for doing that. They said, "He was livid. He did everything in his power not to jump down your throat!" But I came to realise that Aaron was writing in metre and the rhythm of the language is very important.

I fell in love with my wife twenty years ago. I am only now, it seems, getting it through my very thick skull how lucky I am.

Every role is challenging in its own way, but the most challenging roles are the ones that are badly written - then it's completely up to you to come up with something that is interesting to the story and myself as an actor.

I go in to Warner Brothers to test and in the waiting area I saw Allison Janney sitting there, who I did not know but I was a big fan of. I said to myself, "Wait a second. These guys might know what they're doing if they're hiring her."