If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.
Colin Firth
We all know the dangers of sequels. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place too often, and I think you've got to move beyond it, go the extra mile and have the courage not to just repeat the first one.
I was in a lake in 'Love Actually', and I was attacked by some hideous aquatic beast and was rushed to the hospital by a man named Rafael! Something stung my elbow, and it blew up to the size of a tennis ball.
People coming up and saying something nice is always welcome. But when you're being secretly photographed, that's not so nice. I would rather shake hands with someone and exchange a few words than take a selfie.
I absolutely don't care about my looks and I'm so used to them that I wouldn't change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.
It's a film called 'Kursk', which is a true story about a submarine disaster. There was an accident on board a Russian submarine in the year 2000, and it stranded a large number of sailors. That's next.
I think that, often, actors represent what they're not. You get people who define the aristocracy who are not aristocratic - they're lower-middle class or working class. An awful lot of your so-called angry young actors have grown up in extreme bourgeois comfort. It really is surprisingly common.
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
I enjoy playing Mr. Darcy, but I'm not hungry to play Mark Darcy again.
I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.
We are actors who show up for work in our sloppy gear, and we've got this extraordinary tailor. It's someone else who's done the design; someone else who's cut the suit; someone else who's measured it. Basically, your job is to just wear it.
I backpacked through France and Italy in my teens, and then I was at Cannes with the first movie I did in '84.
I'm not patient, and some things drive me crazy. In my work, I get incredibly upset when people don't get it right or don't respect others' needs.
In filming, you're waiting - you're waiting for lights, you're waiting for people to set things up - and when you're not waiting, you're repeating.
It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.
One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.
Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.
Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.
If I were to write a book about the progress of getting to a third film, it would be a long one.
'A great British icon' is not the phrase I'd use about anybody, but there are people you admire that happen to be British. I think it's a phrase that gets attached to anyone who's been around long enough to become overfamiliar.
I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird.
My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.
I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.
I would definitely do TV, at the drop of a hat, if I was offered a good role.
My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.
I've gotten involved in producing now, so the kinds of things that are more my own choice are more possible in that field because I don't have to be castable. I can actually get involved in getting stories off the ground that no one would ask me to be in because I'm the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong nationality, or whatever.
I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science in a way.
I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.
They're not bombarding me with offers, although the ones that have come along have been too preposterous to contemplate, so it's not as if I spend every day resisting $20 million pay cheques.
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
If one lazily thinks of what a fashion designer might do if he's going to conquer cinema next, it would be taking the opportunity to display his fashion sensibilities.
I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine.
I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth, but one of them was that he doesn't rehearse, and another was that he doesn't really direct. If he doesn't like it... he cuts it out of the movie or even replaces you. And he doesn't talk to you.
I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.
The only reason I'm in 'Kingsman' is because Matthew enjoys playing with the unexpected. I'm not playing Harry Hart because I'm the butchest actor in Britain. I'm playing it because he said I'm the last person anyone would expect to see in that role!
The thing is that anybody looks good in the right clothes. It will affect your bearing. It will affect your demeanor. It informs the way you behave.
I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.
My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.
I can't imagine seeing Batman in black and white. It was such a colourful TV series. I know. I'm ancient. It wasn't abnormal to be without a television in those days. People who had colour were special.
In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.
Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.
A life of very, very serious, po-faced films would drive me nuts. I need - and I'm fortunate to have - a fairly varied menu in that respect. I mean, I was shooting 'Mamma Mia!' at the same time as I was doing Michael Winterbottom's 'Genova'. That was a very, very bizarre summer.
My primary instinct as an actor is not the big transformation. It's thrilling if a performer can do that well, but that's not me. Often with actors, it's a case of witnessing a big party piece but wondering afterwards, where's the substance?
To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.
One of the things that makes you want to be an actor, speaking only for myself, is that there's something infantile about it. You're suspending disbelief, pretending and entering into a story world.
As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.
I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.
I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.
Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.
I love 'Manhattan', and I know it's not one of Woody's favorites.
