I don’t know what my limitations are until I reach them. I look for the challenge.

I’ve got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the...

I’d like to be a passion fruit. Not because it’s passionate, but because someone I know is mad about them and has got me onto them.

Yes, in a way. Film is a by-product of my love of theatre. Theatre is for me the greater challenge. In many ways it requires more skill.

[How does that affect his relationships?] It puts a stress on relationships, not just with partners but with mates. … I wouldn’t tell you if I was, so I could be lying. After all, I...

Yeah, I guess that’s fair, … And in a weird way my childhood was a great precursor to where I am now. Every year I had to learn how to interact in a new schoolyard,...

I think everything I do is my early work. I can’t wait to get on to the later stuff.

When I was offered the part in Shakespeare In Love a voice in my head said ‘not another tights role!

I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth...

Shakespeare,

I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t want to mend a broken heart, because that’s someone you don’t want to forget. Scars can be good.

Miramax and Disney were collaborators, and then during the film’s release, they jumped out of bed and it got caught up in a political holding pattern.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of the Rough Gang – we went around and terrorized all...

There are a few remarkable directors who have a great creative streak and then simply go on streaking … Today we have another remarkable director in our midst.

So there was a sense that we were always quite interchangeable.

Give me a sword fight any day.

It takes years to establish yourself, and then you have one big film and everyone calls you an overnight success. You think, ‘Christ, I’ve been sweating and crying for seven years.’