People need revelation, and then they need resolution.

We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.

I've always had a 'Work hard, play hard' attitude to life - I still do - but sometimes you get involved in something that needs a calm, methodical approach.

You know what it's like to feel anxious - it's horrible feeling anxious. It's stressful having that feeling, having butterflies in your stomach, even for a day, and you don't sleep at night.

I think people like to be scared. I think people like tension and suspense in a movie.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

My heroes were all in the theatre.

I think you can't be really posh and be an interesting actor. I'm a bit of a posh rough.

Temperamentally I'm not a natural producer, because I don't have the patience.

A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.

You don't feel you could marry me instead? Got no brains, of course, and I ain't a handsome fellow, like Jack, but I love you. Don't think I could ever love anyone else.

Maybe it's not as important to you as it was for me, but that's not for you to decide.

They didn't guarantee you'd come out a whole person.

I'm learning that you have to make time for what's important. You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.

It is not that death comes, but that life leaves.

Acting serves as the quintessential social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining advantage in every aspect of life.

Perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary for me.

A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families; he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.

I think I'm becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It's the only way you can explain 'em. It's psychological.