If you're at an award ceremony, you're against your mates.

Chaotic people often have chaotic lives, and I think they create that. But if you try and have an inner peace and a positive attitude, I think you attract that.

You can only do your best. That's all you can do. And if it isn't good enough, it isn't good enough.

I've always liked new writing.

Agents and producers have to get you into a box to accommodate their limited imaginations.

Look at Judi Dench, who's brilliant in whatever bloody job she does.

I worked in rep for six years, then I came to London and to the National Theatre. What's better than that

You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles. Does that make sense?

I was brought up a Catholic, so I take no pleasure in guilt.

The one good thing is that I get a lot more good scripts coming through my letterbox. 'Vera Drake' raised my profile in one way, and then 'Harry Potter' in another.

Fortunately my career has never been about how I look, it's about how I can be.

Antonio-"Just in time, Pete. Five more minutes of reading this and she'd have been in a coma."Peter-"Are we such bad company that you'd rather hide out in here reading that old thing?

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

Focus on being balanced - success is balance.

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes

It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.

A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.

I will not go out with a man who wears more jewelry than me, and I'll never, ever go to bed with a guy who calls me Babe. Other than that, however, I'm real flexible.

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.