I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers.

It would've been hard to do something else, to as it were, run away from the circus and become an accountant.

At heart, this job is about continuing to make great theatre for the people of Sheffield - a city I've known and loved since childhood.

Of course 'Hamlet' is a debate about the nature and morality of revenge and whether it is right to do something to assuage your angry feelings.

The idea that if you are very clever you shouldn't be an actor would be laughable in Russia.

We'll be back. I promise you that.

Most good art is left wing. It's a moot point whether there is any good right-wing art.

Where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.

My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope.

I absolutely love working with my dad because there is such an ease about it, and I also love his company.

What did my parents say when I told them I wanted to be an actor? 'Be a plumber.'

I’ll tell you the difference between our countries. Americans think life is serious but not hopeless

India's a very interesting place... there's no formal opposition, but there's genuine on-the-ground opposition.

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

I've always connected with music. Life's not always what you see; it's what going on in your head. Music is what comes out of your subconscious.

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

The seizure of passionate love can be, in such a context, only illicit, breaking in upon the order of one's dutiful life in virtue as a devastating storm.

Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.

Some people are in stultifying environments where there are rigid rules and rituals and they need that to thrive, where other people are just asphyxiated by stuff like that.

The fact is, we'll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before.

School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page.