Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love going for a swim. Growing up in England, anywhere with a pool seems like the height of glamour to me.
I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, although I'm inclined to think he might have been a great prophet.
It's an unfair comparison because when things are developed in the UK, they're developed at script stage only.
We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.
In the end, there's something of the puritan work ethic about me that roles really must sustain me on an intellectual level.
I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.
I'm sponsored by Audi, so I have this rather lovely rather arrangement where they just insist that I'm always in the latest model.
Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.
I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.
I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.
If you believe - which I do - that acting is a bit like advocacy for your character, then of course I want to find the positive points.
I'm one of those idiots; when I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till make-up comes off.
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.
It's constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing to do.
I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.
Theres something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
There is a machismo about an American male who is robust, athletic, able to build things, and he takes care of stuff. And it's a point of pride.
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.'
It's good to be busy on a film set because there is a lot of sitting around, so if you've got two roles to play at one time, then that's great to do.
My background was fairly conservative, and I think there's a strong notion of duty in a background like that, and I don't think that's always helpful.
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.
There are jobs that come along in your life, if you're lucky enough, that elevate you in a considerable way. And 'Homeland' was definitely one of those jobs.
This high-end, novelistic form of TV, you know, is just peppered with despicable people who do marvelous things and marvelous people who do despicable things.
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.
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 or something.
I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.
I went to boarding school, and what that teaches you is to cope emotionally at a young age and to suppress a lot of emotion. Being in the army is, in a way, similar.
I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.
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 red hair. 'Oy, Ginger!'
It's successful, middle-class Arab men and women, professionals with seemingly happy family lives, who are prepared to go to paradise for a greater cause. That's terrifying.
A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable.
I will always find a defense for characters, and that's why it's fun playing characters that are morally ambiguous, or are at least perceived superficially as being problematic.
I didn't know 'Homeland' was going to be 'Homeland.' I just did it because it was a terrific script, and they pitched me the story line, and I was like, 'Huh, that's interesting.'
I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.
It's such an overused phrase: 'to be part of the conversation.' But it's true. It is nice to be part of the conversation - just be sure they are talking about you in the right way.
My parents came to see me in a play at Eton when I was 16. And then, when I said I wanted to try for drama school, they knew there was enough passion there for them to be brave and back me.
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.
There's this sort of cloud that hangs where people are like: 'How long can you keep the heat of 'Homeland' going?' People have short memories is the truth, and Hollywood loves the new and shiny.
If you think you don't want to play another psychopath, but the script is amazing, and the director is fantastic, and the story is incredible, then you may end up playing your third psychopath in a row.
I had no ambition to go to America and be in a TV show. It's not like I've rejected something or decided that I've found something better. Your life just takes you off in strange and different directions.
I'd lived in LA for two years and I said to my agent that I wouldn't do any more network TV, because my family and I had just made the decision to live in England. It would be a whole year in LA shooting network TV.
I found that the quality of TV material that came to me was so great and was just often better than the film material I got. And when I find a good movie that I really like, I jump on it because it's exciting to do.
If you have the same drive and passions that everybody else has - for example, if you're trying to do the right thing for your family and do the right thing for people you employ - then you can be forgiven quite a lot.
When I was at drama school, I remember going to Amsterdam for new year and sitting with friends on the front of a P&O ferry in the wind, having some sort of 'Titanic' moment, declaring ourselves to be the new kings of theatre.
If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.
I investigated post-traumatic stress disorder. I've been to a unit where people are suffering from it, and I read a lot of literature. I looked at footage of soldiers in the combat zone. I found 'Restrepo' to be unbelievably useful.
When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?'
I'm very sad 'Life' wasn't a big hit, But it was undone by politics at NBC. It was intense. I moved my wife, and we had two children back to back. So working those hours and living abroad in L.A. was a handful. But it was a great experience.
There is a latent anger in a lot of people that went to boarding school at an early age. I was eight. And I loved it over the five years, but I think the adjustments for eight-year-olds are a lot. And I think it informs who you are for a long, long time.