I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.

Coming out as gay was an easy enough matter for me, since I worked in a profession where being gay had a long history of being accepted.

It's a great privilege just to be in a film not because you're some packaging that some agent has done with the studio exec: "We need a John Travolta film."

Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.

If I were to believe in a god l would believe in gods. I think monotheism is the really ghastly thing. That is the absolutely staggering to me misapprehension.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me. Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper.

I suppose the thing that really interests me is what mankind did with the big, big, big discoveries that have created our modern age.