Comedians... they're different from actors. There's more ego there. They create the whole thing, I guess, so they're more precious.

Hackney gets a bit of a bad rap, but it's the only place I've ever lived that felt like a community. I know my neighbours.

I always, always want to make people laugh. In every situation. Even when it's inappropriate.

I never used to see anything on TV where the man was in the weaker position. It was always the female showing emotion, breaking down, being emotionally torn apart by men.

I'll cry anywhere because I can do it quite subtly. Walking, that's a good time to have a cry.

Personally, my twenties were a complete waste of time. Professionally, I hope some good came of them.

I love Sutton House in Clapton, a beautiful example of Tudor architecture.

I'm the person who will go to a wedding and switch the place cards around because I don't want to sit next to someone I don't know, because I'm so bad at chatting to strangers.

Spending way too long worrying about what people think about me is a bad habit.

I was the kid who liked making other people laugh, so maybe the comedy came before the acting.

Stresses in a marriage and in family life, sometimes they're prompted by whatever is going on in the wider world as well as what's going on behind your door.

You can't kill us all, human.' He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?

Instead of thinking about where you are think about where you want to be. It takes twenty years of hard work to become an overnight success.

I certainly identify with the role of mentor and, to some degree, maybe teacher. I do a lot of work with kids at the Old Vic.

I find no fault with the Constitution or laws of our country, they are good enough. It is the abuse of those laws which I despise, and which God, good men and angels abhor.

If you respect the events and respect the real life tragedy, you can drive your film to address it in some mature way.

Nobody really knows, do they? They told Stephen Hawking he only had a year left to live and how many years ago was that? You can't know it all.

How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!

the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

The fish only knows that it lives in the water, after it is already on the river bank. Without our awareness of another world out there, it would never occur to us to change.

Just because I was out at the bars all the time didn't mean I wasn't looking for someone to love.