You just have to take control of your own performance..

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because theyve been on reality TV o….

I always resented Tom [Hardy] for turning up on Band Of Brothers and getting the girl — in fact, the only girl in a cast of hundreds of smelly men! I….

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

Acting can be a narrow and isolated experience, because you only examine your particular part..

People need revelation, and then they need resolution..

My heroes were all in the theatre..

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

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual..

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy..

In England we burnt redheads at the stake, because we thought they were witches. There are still young redheads in Britain getting ripped for having ….

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class struct….

I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me..

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

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 ap….

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.'.

You never know when you're taking a job, ever... but you try to take good scripts. That's all you can do as an actor - take the best thing available.….

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school..

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….

It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only..

I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet..