
It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.

People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

Looking in the mirror, staring back at me isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

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.

I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap
My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.

Forget trying to be sexy. That's just gruesome.

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.

To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.

There’s a paradox to most things in life. Acting is often dressing up in frocks and chasing your ego, but that doesn’t mean you don’t take it seriously.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

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.

You have to be ill if you want to get better.

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.
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?

I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.

I enjoy playing Mr. Darcy, but I'm not hungry to play Mark Darcy again.

Something like 'A Single Man,' it was tiny; it was financed by one guy. We all lost money doing it.

I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.

If I were to write a book about the progress of getting to a third film, it would be a long 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.

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.

Growing up, my mates and I would have rather been Sid Vicious or members of the Royal Family.

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.

I backpacked through France and Italy in my teens, and then I was at Cannes with the first movie I did in '84.

I love 'Manhattan', and I know it's not one of Woody's favorites.