I was a weak kid, not good at what all the boys at school were good at and I found that by acting, by being other people, I could liberate myself from those inadequacies.

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then.

You shouldn't allow people who hurt you to occupy a fraction of your heart. Forgive and move on, especially in this season of thanksgiving.

If you're on Twitter, what you're saying is, 'I'm important enough for you to care what I think.'

If you don't look like an airbrushed model ... you have to look past it. You look how you look. What are you going to do?

It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.

I've been so blessed to work with the people I have.

And when I say equality, I mean equality for everybody. Who are you telling who they can marry and who they can’t? What is this? This is 2014.

I come from the place of thinking, 'Whatever works for people' - and if you haven't been exposed to anything else, you really don't know better.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

Only one thing is ever guaranteed, that is that you will definitely not achieve the goal if you don't take the shot.