It's important to me to be in a relationship when I'm in one, but I'm not someone who needs to be in a relationship.

Lazy journalists, they'll read stuff and get a quote then ask the same question again hoping I'll say a similar thing; it's very tiresome.

Of course, I want to look good, as that helped me get jobs. But it didn't get me the jobs I wanted and it held me back.

People talk about opportunity knocking, but the gate was always swinging in the breeze before I got to the door.

When I left drama school, my fear was that I'd get pigeon holed into comic acting and I did so much to counter it that I got stuck in the opposite.

Yes, years of compromise and disappointment have added depth to my acting.

At times, I think of my career as a map. The closer you get to the map, the more you know where you are, but the closer I get to my career, the less happy I feel. At the same time, I have carved out the career for myself which I wanted.

Billy is a funny, cheeky, lovely boy and I love being with him. Parenthood is terrifying though. I can barely walk past a building without panicking that it's going to collapse on his head.

I don't think the roles that I'm necessarily known for in this country are my best work, or even anywhere near it. I didn't think I was great in 'Arcadia.' I think it's a great part and a great play and had a lot of attention.

I recognize myself to a lesser or greater extent in everything I read, good and bad, and that's part of being a human being if you're honest enough. And obviously the darker parts are the things you don't let control you.

I was a very undisciplined person but acting was something that actually motivated me to get up in the morning. I hadn't experienced that before, but it was something that really excited me. I think I could be quite self-conscious and it gave me a release.

I was the lead in 'Interview With The Vampire', until Tom Cruise decided he was interested. I was in 'The Wings Of The Dove' with Uma Thurman, until that got cancelled. I was in 'Shakespeare In Love' with Julia Roberts, until that fell apart.

I was very frustrated, in a physical sense, by people seeing me in a way that I wasn't. And I was beginning to find myself boxed into a corner. Hopefully things have loosed up a bit, and I've gotten better and become more relaxed as an actor.

I wasn't a model schoolboy. Of course, I was forced to sit through Shakespeare and I really got into some of it, though it depended on who was reading it out.

I'm very, very happy with my recognition/lack of recognition in England in terms of my life. In terms of household name-age. The public's memory is very short, luckily.

I've discovered that I've never had much respect for money, and that has meant that money has ended up ruling me a little bit more than it should have. So I'm trying to learn - at this late stage in life! - to actually control that.

My career has suddenly started to be the one that I'd always wanted, not in terms of level of success, but in terms of - and this is what I've been banging on about - playing different parts in different media.

My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death; now I see it from my son's perspective.

People talk about me in 'Arcadia' and I think I was okay in it but I've given better performances in other productions that didn't have the same impact. But I knew 'Arcadia' was going to be an event and I wanted to be part of it.

The reason I am unemployed for six months out of every year is because I have to turn down most of the films I'm offered. If I didn't, I'd only ever play a dark, satanic count on a horse.