We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.
Jeremy Irons
No, I don't believe in hard work. If something is hard, leave it. Let it come to you. Let it happen.
I don't mind getting older. I'm enjoying not having that raging ambition I've had all my life.
Commerce seems to be covering every aspect of our lives now. Which me, because I'm a romantic, is sad for me to say.
My feeling, of course, is that it's ludicrous to try to prove God's existence by science. God has nothing to do with science. God has all to do with soul, and who can explain that?
And whenever I'm in a situation where I'm wearing the same as 600 other people and doing the same thing as 600 other people, looking back, I always found ways to make myself different, whether it be having a red lining inside of my jacket, having red shoes, it hasn't changed.
Nowhere are emissions monitored constantly. So the truth is that the real quantity of dioxin emissions from incineration remains unknown.
I envy children who know that they're going to become doctors, know they're going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that's what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.
I wouldn't call myself a method actor, but I have my own method. I do my own research. I come up with a background for the character. I'm not a club man. I don't like isms. I've never really studied Stanislavski.
I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.
I have played characters where I haven't been absorbed - you know, what I call a typical film leading man role where you just have to look gorgeous and be attractive and charming. It bores me. I like a bit of dirt, a bit of sand in the oyster.
There's a great thing about amateur sport: it is purer. And the athletes are not open to so much pressure with amateur sport.
There are wonderful things happening all around the world. From Nova Scotia to Kerala, Bristol to Melbourne, and even in the Philippines, zero waste is on the agenda. I think what's particularly inspiring is when communities don't wait to be told what to do but just go ahead and do it.
I don't watch a lot of television. I try to watch all the good movies, but I've got about twenty of these television series that I should be watching. I haven't seen 'The Wire.' I haven't seen 'Mad Men.' I haven't seen Kevin's thing. What's that called? 'House of Cards.' I hear it's wonderful.
The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.
He's a man who... well, one of the great things about Shakespeare is that his characters are inconsistent, and that's something I think makes him a writer above most writers because inconsistency is what we, as people, are full of. We maybe don't see it in ourselves too often, but we are inconsistent.
I think all of society should be a think-tank where you throw ideas about. I had hoped the Internet would help. Actually, what it has done is make everybody go schtum. They're attacked for saying anything. So they say nothing.
I think the job of artists is to stir things up.
So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine.
It was a better time to be a young actor when I started out. There was a repertory system where you could go and practise.
Civility, politeness, it's like a cement in a society: binds it together. And when we lose it, then I think we all feel lesser and slightly dirty because of it.
I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.
I came to London. I spent nine months doing domestic work and gardening because I knew I wanted to get a West End show. So, when I was offered jobs in Stoke or Leicester or whatever, I'd say no. Eventually, I got 'Godspell.' It was gently building.
Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.
Film wise, I invariably look at my work and reckon I could have done it better. I'm also conscious that I'm in a profession where we get more praise than we should compared to the usefulness of what we do.
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.
You can be in love and raise a family wonderfully by not being married, but actually, marriage does give us a strength, because it's quite hard to get out of, and so it makes us fight more to keep it together. If divorce becomes dead easy - which it sort of has - then we don't have that backup. Because, for everybody, relationships are hard.
Paris Hilton, that's very interesting what she did. I've never done that. I haven't really sort of ever got into that. As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old don't have the energy I can remember how life used to be.
Really, ambition has gone. I look for things that tickle my fancy. You begin to see the end of life on the horizon. You think, 'It's not going on forever, this.' Let's make the most of what time I have left.
And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.
It's always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.
My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.
Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
Godspell was a good leap for me, it was a good shop window.
I have developed a life which seems to need a relatively high income.
A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away.
The film business has changed hugely. You seem to spend about 30 per cent of the time producing the films and 70 per cent talking about it.
What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.
I wanted to find a way of life that allowed me great freedom, not to be stuck. I went to a very traditional school, which prepared people for the army or for banking or for industry, and I wanted to be outside of that.
You ask my wife or my two sons, and they'll tell you that I ain't free with the money.
Peter Brook's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' I remember seeing. That was pretty early on. And suddenly, I realized how theatrical Shakespeare is, how alive, how wonderful it is when it's opened up by a great director and a great company.
I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.
I think the world is much more transparent now, and I think that's probably a good thing. On the other hand, I think it makes it really tough for people who are natural born leaders who could be guiding us and leading our countries.
Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.
At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
However, I wasn't very good at the sciences, or didn't have a lot of help in the sciences or something but certainly didn't set science for my A level. And when I came to take my A levels I didn't get a good enough result to go to University.
So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.
So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.
